The Travel Critic

Right, so Mangosteen on Cotham Hill. A Thai tapas place. Which is not a thing. I mean, I’m not sure they have tapas in Thailand. I imagine the word would cause the Spanish to storm out into the streets, slapping their thighs in horror and waving jamón ibérico in protest. Because “tapas” are their thing. Tapas is Spain’s intellectual property. Pinched, filched, repurposed by the rest of us until it means “small plates of whatever we can think of.” Which, if you think about it, is essentially the English pub buffet too. Mini sausage rolls, fish fingers hacked in half, prawn vol-au-vents from the freezer aisle. Tapas, English-style.

But never mind. Because “Thai tapas” has a ring to it, doesn’t it? It promises a sort of street-market bacchanal of lemongrass and chilli, where you get to gorge on fifteen dishes instead of three. And if you’re going out with eight mates and half a dozen pints in you, that’s really all you want. The good news is Mangosteen delivers.

It’s one of those menus where you could happily order everything. And so, inevitably, you do. The danger of tapas—of any tapas—is that you oscillate wildly between two extremes: 1) over-ordering to the point of coronary episode, or 2) under-ordering and then resentfully watching the prawn tempura vanish before you’ve had a sniff of it. We, being British and drunk, naturally opted for the former. And, frankly, it worked out beautifully.

The food itself? Surprisingly good. In fact, better than I had braced for given the concept. A lot of zingy, punchy flavours, all of it looking rather chic in that Instagram-ready way—lime leaves scattered just-so, dipping sauces in little ceramic pots. The bill, when it arrived, didn’t make me want to throw my wallet at the wall either, which is always handy when feeding a ravenous mob.

Service: bang on. Genuinely friendly, not that fake “Hi guys, are we having a fun night?” guff you get in chain joints. They seemed to know when to appear and when to vanish, which is all you really want from waiters.

The room itself is modern, stylish, a bit buzzy but not deafening. The sort of place where you can actually hear the person opposite without having to mime “pad Thai” across the table. Nice crowd too: students with overdrafts, couples on dates, gangs of friends pretending they’re only going for “a couple of bits to share.”

So yes, I’d go back. Absolutely. I’d just try to keep my ordering in check, lest I roll out of there having eaten every last satay skewer in Bristol. But then again, isn’t that the whole point?