Bosco Pizzeria
96 Whiteladies Road, Clifton, BS8 2QX
http://www.boscopizzeria.co.uk/
Bosco aims to deliver the taste of wood-fired pizzas from Naples and seeing as I love pizza I was very excited to see if Bosco could pull it off. It was very easy to book at table through the website and when we arrived for a pre-theatre dinner at 6pm there were already 4 or 5 other tables occupied with a good number of children. We were shown to a table right at the front of the restaurant in front of an open floor to ceiling window which given the dropping temperature outside and a sparsely decorated luke warm restaurant was not a particularly nice welcome to Bosco. Luckily the waitress cottoned on to the not-so-great table choice and asked if we would prefer to sit nearer the back of the restaurant to which we immediately agreed on the proviso that they could claim the table back at 8pm. As we were due at the theatre by 7:30pm this was fine. Had we visited on a hot sunny day, then the window seat would have been an excellent choice so I'm glad the waitress used some common sense to move us.
The inside of Bosco took a long time to renovate, which given the size of the massive pizza oven is no surprise. However, it feels not finished. The walls are exposed concrete with exposed pipework. I know this is trendy; however it made the place feel cold. Perhaps with a bustling service it would warm up and keep the heat in.
There were an assortment of different places to sit; bar seats by the pizza cooker and also by the bar were mixed with a some low tables in the center of the restaurant and a line of tables across the back wall. We were sat in the bank of tables along the back wall which was great to watch the service; but we were right next to the "front of house" point which meant the phone rang almost constantly and there were lots of panicked conversations taking place within earshot.
There seemed to be a lot of emphasis being put on the booking sheet and it was very apparent that the staff were a week into their new jobs.
We were asked promptly for our drink order and when we requested a few minutes to decide what we were eating first we were then abandoned for a while and then approached again for a drink order and then abandoned again until someone noticed that our menus had been shut on the table for quite a while. I'm not sure why the waitress who took the drink order couldn't take the food order at the same time.
We decided we had to sample the pizza after reading about how pizza had inspired the opening of the restaurant and we also decided to try a pasta dish. We opted for the Emila - Romagna pizza for £9.50 which came topped with Italian sausage, Napoli tomato sauce, Fior di latte, wood roasted onions & sweet peppers and the Ox cheek ragu, rigatoni & smoked mozzarella also for £9.50. We also opted for the Primitivo to accompany our meal for £13 a carafe.
The food took quite a while to arrive, but we decided this must have been because of the baked Ox Cheek Ragu dish.
Both dishes were very appetizing but the Ox Cheek Ragu was fantastic. Very high meat content which was super soft and plenty of lightly smoked mozzarella on top. It was utterly divine. The pizza was ok, we didn't feel it was amazing and was certainly trumped by the pasta. This was a shame as we were expecting great things from the pizza. Perhaps we should have tried one of the more adventurous bianco pizzas but having never sampled a real-life pizza from Naples I can only talk from personal taste. The topping was very watery and sparse. The sausage was tasty; it contained a lot of star anise which was the main flavor coming through.
We wrapped up our meal with a double espresso each and made our way to the Hippodrome. The bill came in at under £30 and we did use a 20% off voucher we collected from another restaurant. The service was ok but I would imagine on a busy service it might be slow. If I was to visit again, I'd have to order the Ox Cheek ragu and for that dish alone I can recommend visiting but for pizza I would return to Beerd as that is the pizza I can't stop thinking about. We were debating how successful Bosco will be in the location it is and what trade it will catch. For us it would be a special visit as it's not in a location that is very accessible to us but seeing as most tables last night were families that bodes well for the future.
