Bristol has a great restaurant scene, with Michelin-starred restaurants, busy food markets, and top tapas bars in shipping containers. All of these places have access to some of the best food in Britain, which is right outside their doors. It really is a powerful mix.
Of course, Bristol was recently named one of the top 20 places in the world to eat by Travel Mag. So it shouldn’t be a wonder that the city has some really great pizzas. Today, we’re going to talk about the best of them.
Here is our list of the best places to get pizza in Bristol, without further ado.
Ash and Flour
Wood-fired bread pizzas that are proofed for 72 hours are what Flour & Ash is known for. The Bristol landmark has been around for almost 10 years and is still going strong.
Steve Gale owns the Bristol restaurant Flour and Ash. He opened it in 2014 and began running it. The restaurant quickly became known as one of the best pizza places in the city thanks to its tasty wood-fired sourdough pies.
People in Bristol breathed a sigh of relief when the restaurant finally opened again in September 2021, thanks to a partnership between Steve Gale and the Hyde & Co Group. The restaurant had to close its original location on Cheltenham Road because of the pandemic’s seemingly impossible social distance rules. A terrace and an outdoor dining area can be found in front and back of the new site on Whiteladies Road. The pizza kitchen is open to the public. Happy holidays!
Flour and Ash is known for its high-quality ingredients, many of which come from Murrays of Clevedon, an Italian food specialist. They serve their signature wood-fired pizzas, as well as a few Italian spuntini and small plates, as well as wines, cocktails, and local craft beer and cider.
Our favourite thing to order here is the House meatball pizza. This tomato-based dish costs £14 and has small pork and beef meatballs that look like they are sunk in a bubbling blanket of fior di latte cheese. The Brussels sprouts on the pizza caramelise in a beautiful way, giving the dish a unique twist. The spicy kick from the red chillies finishes off this unforgettable pizza, which tastes so good that even the biggest sprout critic might change their mind.
The restaurant has been called a “local gem” by the Good Food Guide many times, and in 2018 it won “best pizza” at the Bristol Good Food Awards. Also, in 2015, food writer Jay Rayner gave the restaurant five stars. We have to agree with the big guy: this is one of the best pizzas in Bristol.
Bertha’s
Bertha’s pizzeria officially opened in August 2016 at Wapping Wharf, but its journey to become a full-fledged pizzeria began much earlier, in 2010. Bertha’s started out as a street food business, selling pizzas from a modified yellow Land Rover at food festivals and other local events.
After 13 years, the pizzeria is now happily located at The Old Gaol Stables at the very top of Gaol Ferry Steps. Every day, they serve up dozens of tasty sourdough pizzas. Co-owner Kate Faragher calls Bertha’s a friendly neighbourhood restaurant that serves simple, cheap food and supports local, sustainable producers. It’s a very welcoming place. What else do you need?
Bertha’s Pizza has won a lot of awards, including being named one of The Sunday Times’ Top 25 Pizzerias in the UK and being recognised at the BBC Food & Farming Awards for its commitment to sustainability.
If you’re a true traditionalist who thinks pineapple doesn’t belong on pizza, you’re about to get a tasty surprise. Bertha’s taste creators are adventurous and try to put together flavours that you won’t find at a regular pizzeria. The specials board is also always interesting, with things like smoked haddock pizza and a topping made of sweet, giving peaches.
They also do a great job of feeding vegans, and again, pizza fans who don’t eat meat should check out the special boards. Spiced roasted beets and feta became best friends on our last visit. They were the right mix of sweet and salty in one bite.
We really like the Meat & Heat pizza the most, which has trendy chilli honey poured over a pepperoni pizza and spiced, cured sausage made with Gloucester Old Spot. It’s delicious, but you might want to bring some Rennie for afters.
If you pair this one (the pizza, not the antacid) with a lazy, hazy Keller Pils lager from Lost & Grounded, you’ll have a meal that tastes great with yeast.
The Sonny Stores
In Bristol, Sonny Stores is a family-run store that serves what some people call “Britalian” food. It opened in September 2020, a time of chaos. The business was started by Mary Glynn and Pegs Quinn, a husband and wife team. It started out as The Lockdown Pizza Company, a delivery-only pizza service for lockdowns. And those pizzas were really good…
As soon as the national lockdown ended, Sonny Stores changed to become a place where everyone could feel welcome and enjoy a wide range of tasty Italian dishes made with fresh British ingredients. With Mary’s experience in events and hotel management and Pegs’s experience cooking, especially Italian food, they have made Sonny Stores a very popular place for casual dining in Southville, Connecticut.
There is a truly outstanding dining experience inside this cosy building, with dishes made by a talented team led by head cook Peg, who used to work at River Café. It’s possible that Michelin will soon follow.
That deep, unspoken knowledge of both Italian food and the art of open-hearted hospitality can be seen in the pizza that Sonny Stores sells. These tiny, dinghy-shaped pizzas have the puffiest crusts and the most blistered surfaces. They also have the simplest but most thoughtful toppings, like Don Bocarte Cantabrian anchovies on top of a simple marinara pizza or an egg yolk on top of a provolone “rarebit” pizza for extra gooeyness. Really tasty.
As with Flour and Ash, Bristol fan Jay Rayner has liked eating here, saying, “They get things very right.” Without a doubt, they do, and we can’t wait to see what the future holds for this favourite Bristol neighbourhood restaurant.
By Itself
As a thought experiment before we go on, is your local Bristol pizzeria even a Bristol pizzeria if it’s not run by a married couple?
Finally, we get to A Cappella, a well-known pizza place on Wells Road that is run by Paul Stewart and his wife Jennifer. With most of the products coming from Milan and Naples, they make pizzas that are truly Neapolitan.
The oldest pizza place on our list, A Cappella, has been open since 2007. It’s a little out of the way in Totterdown, but the great pizza is worth the trip south of the Avon. This pizza is so good that it has won a number of awards, including a prestigious Gold at the 2019 PAPA Awards, which honour the best pizza and pasta in the country.
Although it’s unlikely, we think the judges tried the Glissandro before giving it the gold star. The pizza expertly balanced the sour and salty tastes of capers and sundried tomatoes, and the caramelised onions smoothed out the edges, which we thought was a great idea.
With medium (12-inch) and large (14″ pizzas that never go over £15), this is a great place to go with a friend. The fact that you can bring your own alcohol makes the experience even cheaper and friendlier.
Bosco Pizza Place
Bosco Pizzeria in Bristol makes wood-fired pizzas that are a mix of Neapolitan-style dough with puffy ends and American-style dough with a crispier base. The pizzas are influenced by both New York and Naples.
Bosco first opened on Whiteladies Road in 2014, and then opened a second location in Clifton Village. Since then, it has grown to Cheltenham and Bath. Its Milsom Place location opened in August 2021 and won the “Best New Restaurant” award at the Crescent Club awards the following year.
Miles Johnson, who started Bosco, was inspired by trips to Italy, where he saw how clear Italian cooking was based on ingredients and how important family meals were. That passion shows in the beautiful simplicity of the pizzas, like the signature Bosco, which is topped with fior di latte, tomato, olive oil, and basil, or our favourite, the Carciofi, which is made with wood-fired artichokes, taleggio, and green olives.
If you’re in the mood for some Venetian street food, the cicchetti is also very good. The palette, with its slow-cooked tomato sauce, is a must-try.
You can get Mission Pizza at Left Hand Giant Brewpub.
Is there something better than pizza and beer together? We have not tried it if that’s the case. We have, however, eaten a lot of the pizza at the Mission residency in the well-known brewery Left Hand Giant.
The neighbourhood pub and brewery in Finzel’s Reach is only a ten-minute walk from Temple Meads station. It’s a lovely spot for a pint, with views of the historic Bristol Harbour and access to Castle Park via the famous Castle Bridge.
The St Philips Taproom has two brewing sites. The first makes modern hop-forward IPAs, fruited sours, and Imperial Stouts. The second, the Left Hand Giant restaurant, makes beers with lower alcohol levels and lagers that haven’t been filtered.
This is where you’ll find Mission Pizza, whose goal is to show people in Bristol and beyond that veggie and vegan pizzas can taste just as unbelievably good. Even though it’s a pretty big goal, you might be persuaded after trying one of these great pizzas with fennel sausage, sticky pork, and bacon that doesn’t contain any meat.
Jim Bishop and Sandie Tomlinson, who are both fully trained craft bakers, started Mission in Bristol. At first, they mostly sold pizza at street food events from a teardrop caravan that had been converted from a 1950s car. In 2019, Mission Pizza teamed up with Left Handed Giant to open their first permanent location. May it last a long time!
