I tried the £98 steak and chips in the hardest Bristol restaurant to get a table

What’s the best steak in Bristol? It’s a question I’m often asked, along with where’s the best Sunday roast.

Bristol has some notable restaurants when it comes to steak. Local independent places like The Ox in Corn Street and Mugshot in St Nicholas Street are definitely up there, as is the popular national chain Miller & Carter, which has a restaurant inside the Marriott Royal on College Green and another at Cribbs Causeway.

But ask most people who know their meat what the best Bristol steakhouse of the lot is - and it’s also number one on TripAdvisor - it has to be Pasture in Redcliffe.

Not that it’s easy to get a table. I know people who have patiently waited three months for a table on a Friday or Saturday evening.

The trick apparently - and don’t tell anybody else - is to aim for an earlier table at the end of the week.

When we arrived for our 5.30pm Friday table, there were people just finishing their meal - they had bagged tables in that mid-afternoon hinterland between lunch and dinner, which seems the best-kept secret in town.

Pasture was opened in 2018 by chef Sam Elliott in what for years had been Byzantium. It’s a beautifully converted Victorian warehouse set across two floors with views of St Mary Redcliffe church.

Since it opened, Pasture has expanded into Cardiff and there are plans to open in Birmingham this spring. There are also plans to open another site in Bristol next year - a butchery, deli, cookery school and burger joint around the corner in the new Redcliffe Quarter currently under construction.

The restaurant group has also recently won three-star accreditation from The Sustainable Restaurant Association for its ‘outstanding dedication to sustainability’.

Pasture has its own farm on the outskirts of Bristol which supplies much of its vegetables and leaves, and most of the other ingredients come within the immediate area - all suppliers are namechecked on a map on the menu. Pasture has also planted its own vineyard so it can start producing its own wine eventually.

Anybody who has eaten in the brilliant Hawksmoor restaurants around the UK will see where Pasture got some of its inspiration from.

In the dining room, there’s a glass-fronted meat fridge with huge cuts of meat hanging and dry-aging for a minimum of 45 days. Pink Himalayan salt draws the moisture from the meat to ensure maximum flavour.

The beef comes from the award-winning Cornish butchers Philip Warren who supplies some of the best restaurants in the UK. It’s all cooked over real fire in the open-view kitchen facing the diners.

Pasture’s own butchers and chefs break down the whole carcasses into different cuts. The menu includes individual steaks - 300g rump (£21.95), 200g fillet (£29.95), 250g sirloin (£26.95), 300g rib-eye (£28.95) and 650g cote de boeuf (£42) - but the main attraction is the blackboard of ‘house cuts’ of different weights and prices.

Service at Pasture is friendly and well-informed. Waiting staff bring to the table a tray of the day’s house cuts and talk about them with deep knowledge and confidence.

When customers order the different cuts, they are chalked off the board so you have to be quick if you have your eye on certain weights and prices.

The cuts include a tomahawk steak (£9 per 100g) and porterhouse (a sirloin and fillet cooked on the bone, £9 for 100g).

We went for the most popular - the classic French cut chateaubriand, which is cut from the fillet and the leanest and most tender cut of all. It's the Bugatti or Aston Martin of the steak world.

Before our steak, we nibbled on exceptional sourdough from Coombeshead Farm, served with smoked butter and sea salt (£5).

We also shared the short rib croquettes (£6) - four orbs of juicy pulled beef within a crisp golden coating and served with spicy gochujang aioli.

We had gone for the 700g chateaubriand (the smallest one available at the time) which costs £14 per 100g - so that's a price tag of £98 but there was enough meat for three people and possibly four. 

That price also includes two sides so we went for the delicious grilled portobello mushrooms with confit garlic and thyme (normally £5.95) and really good dripping chips with sea salt and malt vinegar (normally £4.95). The price also includes two sauces - we went for the peppercorn and the chimichurri.

The chateaubriand had been cooked with real precision, medium-rare as requested, and it was served on an oval metal dish, sliced into pieces as thick as a decent paperback. It had been rested for a time, too, so all the juices had gone back into the meat.

The edges of the chateaubriand had caramelised in the flames of the grill but the meat itself was rosy red, soft and juicy, with a few crunchy sea salt flakes sprinkled over the top. It was simply steak heaven - velvety, full-flavoured meat washed down with a silky Malbec from Argentina.

We both agreed it was the most tender and flavoursome steak we had ever tasted. We even had some leftover for a doggy bag to make sandwiches the following day.

Pasture may be one of the hardest restaurants to get into in Bristol these days but it’s worth the wait and price. It’s the best steakhouse in the city, simple as that.

Pasture, 2 Portwall Lane, Redcliffe, Bristol, BS1 6NB.