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Bath Priory Hotel & Restaurant

Address:	Weston Road, Bath Somerset BA1 2XT
Tel	01225 331922
Email:	mail@thebathpriory.co.uk
Website:	Visit their website
Price: £65.00	Wine: £20.50	Champagne: £55.50
Opening Hours:	Mon-Sun 12N-1.45pm 7-9.30pm

Square Meal review of Bath Priory Hotel & Restaurant:

Only a mile from the city centre, the Bath Priory has the cosseting atmosphere & velvety lawns normally associated with country house hotels. It’s the epitome of English comfort, with heavy drapes, well-stuffed sofas & gilt-framed hunting pictures. In this setting, the restaurant’s unabashedly modern cooking is like finding a Picasso in a room full of Rembrandts. The menu only hints at what you’re about to receive: dishes named partridge with young sprouts, bubbles of physalis & clove bud, or chocolate with painted spice & sweet corn ‘kilner’. But the waiting staff are well briefed to explain, & every dish makes perfect culinary sense when it arrives, offering pure, intense flavours & bang-on-the-nail technique. A starter of home-cured wood pigeon transformed the homely bird into delicate slices of bresaola, a streak of minneola (a citrus fruit) puree the ideal foil for its richness. Beautifully caramelised scallops benefited from the sweetness & smoke of gelled apple balm & smoked cauliflower, while succulent belly pork with fennel offered subtle layers of flavour & texture. For dessert, ‘sorbets & ices, cones & wafer, pollen & paper’ keeps the surprises coming. The fabulously well-researched wine list deserves lengthy scrutiny.