Spicer+Cole have opened their second Bristol cafe on Princess Victoria Street in Clifton.
The new cafe has very much the same feel of their original home on Queen Square Avenue, with their signature tins of Lyle’s Black Treacle containing the sugar on each table.
Everything is just done very well in a Spicer+Cole cafe, in very relaxed surroundings.
Their original cafe is somewhere that I can often be found before 9am on a weekday morning, drinking a flat white and reading a newspaper before the desk job begins.
The new cafe has one wall almost entirely made up of exposed brick work, with a large fire place that has been turned into a new feature.
Leather banquettes line this wall, there are mini stools facing the full-size window looking out onto Princess Victoria Street and there is also a second room down a couple of stairs at the back
Breakfast includes toast (£1.95), sourdough or granary, or a smoked salmon bagel (£4.25); lunch options including savoury tart or tortilla (£5.95) with salad, all available in and out, and what I thought was a courgette served with bread until I realised it was the soup of the day.
The opening of Spicer+Cole also follows what is proving to be a bit of a food and drink renaissance on Princess Victoria Street, with Somerset House newly reopened next door and another contender for the end-of-year accolade, Wallfish restaurant, at the end of the road.
Spicer+Cole, 9 Princess Victoria Street, Clifton, Bristol, BS8 4BX
I welcome your new cafe/coffee shop in Clifton, Bristol, as it excels all the others in Clifton in terms of table availability, cleanliness, staff intelligence, service and coffee quality. It clearly has good management. However, there is one aspect which I think is appalling and which spoils it for me and my wife and, I believe, many others. This is the fact that all the food there is exposed to the coughs, sneezes and spittle of all your customers as they queue up at the counter for service. I find this hard to understand in this day and age – all other coffee shops/cafes in Clifton display their foodstuffs in glass display units where they are protected from airborne infections. There may be a lot of customers who do not mind or mention this, but this can only be due to their ignorance of basic hygiene and infection routes. I feel you should not be taking advantage of this but should be setting an example relevant to standards of hygiene in the 21st Century. While I go into this cafe for a coffee, I shall never buy food there.