The New Menu At The Eldon House

The Eldon House is a bit of a hidden gem. Straddling the invisible border that separates the “olde world” buildings standing in the shadow of the QEH school on Jacobs Wells Road and the modern part of the Clifton Triangle. Blink and you might miss it, this pub is steeped in history and used to be a theatre a few hundred years ago.

Stepping inside, the front room is warm and cosy with the bar dominating the space. They have a great range of beers on tap, when I was in they had Bristol breweries Lost and Grounded, Moor and Bristol Beer Factory on which makes a girl feel at home. The “restaurant” area has plenty of solid wood tables and chairs arranged in an unusually shaped room, it very much still feels like a theatre here with some tables on a raised stage area and the round wall. If you want some privacy, you might be lucky enough to snag the wee snook area hidden behind the bar.

I have been here before, I won a free meal and was totally blown away by the size of the meals and how tasty everything was so hearing they had ditched the pub grub and gone down the pizza route left me slightly dreading heading back. In a city where pizza is king, it better be good pizza.

The menu is decent, enough pizza toppings that everyone would be happy, simple but tasty sounding sides and the occasional pub special can still be ordered if you really can’t find anything to tickle your fancy. My dining companion Bex and I decided to start with an order of nacho’s to get the ball rolling. The weather was foul and we needed the cheese hit.

The portion was huge, not really a side or a starter for one so be warned and was very generously loaded with tortilla chips and cheese. We both agreed the cheese could have done with more melting as a lot of it was merely warm and we both wanted more of the lovely toppings (sour cream, guacamole and BBQ sauce) but all in all, we were satisfied.

We ordered our pizza’s, Bex going for a classic Margherita with pesto and me (the chubby chubber of the pair) went for a fried chicken number. The pizzas are all handmade using a simple dough, no sourdough or “authentic” Nepalese 300-year old recipes here. All the toppings are made in-house and you can really tell. The Margherita had plenty of sweet tomato sauce, creamy mozzarella and punchy green pesto drizzled liberally on top. My fried chicken topped pizza had a sweet and creamy sweetcorn puree base and was loaded with plenty of spicy fried chicken breast, chilli, a fantastic homemade BBQ sauce flavoured with orange and lovely pink, pickled onions. Really tasty!

The pizzas were made really well, no soggy middles, stingy toppings or bland flavours. The pub was criminally empty of diners so I suggest you all head over soon!

NB: This meal was offered free of charge but I was in no way expected to give a good review