The Old Bear Inn, Staverton

Pizzeria Amici

➤ 22 Silver St, BA15 1JZ, Wiltshire, United Kingdom

Pizza • Pasta • Vegan • Italian

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"We recently had a spontaneous meal at an Italian pizza restaurant to celebrate the last night of our short holiday. We had been wanting to try this place for a while and it did not disappoint. The calamari starter for two was excellent, with perfectly crispy fried batter, a deliciously dressed salad, and a tasty mayo dip. G ordered a pizza and I requested a calzone, which they were happy to accommodate as they can make any pizza into a calzone. Both the pizza and calzone were outstanding, perfectly cooked with no signs of being overdone. Everything was made fresh on the premises, which was evident with the large bags of flour in the shop and the genuine Italian owners running the place. It was a five-star experience overall, with friendly service and a wonderful conversation with Ivano, the owner. We will definitely be returning in the future."

The Weaving Shed

➤ 3 Bridge Yard, Wiltshire, United Kingdom, BA15 1JB

Pizza • Steak • Seafood • European

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"This restaurant is located in a beautiful location overlooking the Avon River in Bradford. They didn't have many vegan options, but I really enjoyed what I had. The Focaccia star was delicious (I don't eat bread often so I'm really excited when I have good bread! I also had a miso braided mushroom with vegan pumpkin seeds Pesto, which was stellar. Honestly, I would have been happy with another mushroom cap, so I would have done my meal! The main was a wide bean risotto, which was good but slightly underwhelming after the fabulous mushroom shell! This is a busy place with an open kitchen. I think a restaurant is really brave to have an open kitchen, and as the diner, I like to pee in there to see how the food is treated. Bravo!"

Ravello

➤ 1-2 St. Margarets Street, Wiltshire, United Kingdom, BA15 1BY

Vegan • Italian • European • Vegetarian

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"This is going to be a short one because if I tell you all the great things about this restaurant, it would be less a review than a book of Dickensesque proportions! A lovely restaurant in a lovely building in a lovely town. The staff are professional and friendly; we were certainly well looked after. The food is wonderful, traditional Italian fare for the most part, cooked to perfection, full of flavour, and beautifully presented. I can highly recommend the Linguine Ravello, a perfect amalgam of king prawns, muscles, et al, a fantastic seafood dish. The other dishes are perfection too. You like rich meaty lasagna? One of the best I have had. The ravioli of the day? A wonder whatever the filling. And don't get me started on the profiteroles! All in all, a constant delight. If you haven't guessed, this is highly recommended."

Woolley Grange

➤ Woolley Green, BA15 1TX, Wiltshire, United Kingdom

Cakes • British • Breakfast • Ice Cream

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"The best thing about our experience was the telephone booking for a special lunch. Lovely, friendly, helpful person who noted that it was my wife’s 50th and would pass this on so the staff could ensure that this would be a great and memorable occasion.Lovely day, the sun shining, and the setting glorious – but the moment we entered, things were not as anticipated – a “matter of fact” greeting, perhaps acceptable in an ordinary 3 star hotel, but little warmth – a vague, “who are you?” from the maître d’ on entering the restaurant, as if we were intruding on their comfortably empty dining room and they would be called to work – and a rather “take it or leave it” from the waitress, though we did get an embarrassed smile on one occasion – the only smile we received all lunchtime.The menu was rather unexciting – I ought to have looked on line first Very little range, though lunches probably don’t have a resident chef at that time of day, so that might limit the available options: baguette, beetroot tartare with rice, burger, black bean burger, fish and chips tarted up with “Iford cider”, tagliatelle, a gnocchi, sirloin steak, and a “superfood salad” with choice between chicken breast, smoked salmon, and tofu. We opted for the latter, one chicken, two salmon, and added 3 extra sides (great idea with us choosing pork belly, polenta chips and gougère. Having taken our order we were told, “sorry, there’s no gougère,” so we chose the “crispy calamari” instead.For drinks we chose the local Kettlesmith beer, which I enjoy anyway, and an alcohol free Pink Negroni. The latter arrived and was so alcoholic it could well have made our driver fail a breath test on the spot – maybe that was why we were billed £11.50 for the replacement, an unadorned, ungarnished glass, mainly of ice cubes that rapidly melted into a warm alcohol-free wishy-washy liquid I suppose we should not have expected too much of an alcohol free cocktail, normally of gin and vermouth .. but what was quite unacceptable was that the thin strip of orange peel that had enhanced the original, probably quite lovely cocktail, was absent and no one had bothered to replace it, not even with a sprig of mint!Well, maybe the food might make up for it? No such luck. The attractive, large ceramic bowls were generously filled with a range of leaves, but the kale, hard and chewy as kale at the end of a hard winter, (or a mature chard) failed in a desperate attempt to masquerade as tender. The chicken dumped atop was bland, with any taste poached out of it, and the salmon was just ordinary farm-bred, cheap supermarket salmon. I loved the pork belly – could have had a full plate of that! – but the polenta chips were pretty mushy under a tasteless crumbly, far from crispy cover, and the replaced calamari a disaster – far from “Crispy”, they drooped into a bowl, batter hanging off, and the cooking oil that welled at the bowl apex typified the lacklustre attention of the kitchen, examples of whom waddled in and out with shoulder-burdened posture and bored, inattentive facial expressions that seemed to typify the rest of the on duty staff on what should have been a happy celebrative half-a-century birthday – an occasion that not one member of staff had even bothered to acknowledge!The setting is a typical local Jacobean building with Victorian additions and a lovely green countryside overview. The garden has a few choice plants, shrubs and trees but could have been cared for more attentively. The view from the restaurant needed more care and a bit of back-bending weeding. The restaurant was tired and disappointing, but the architecture holding up the ceiling glass was imaginative and the lighting, if needed, would have been exciting. Perhaps the brown-edged, ailing leaves on the table and wall plant decorations were typical of this establishment’s attitude to making what should have been a joyful occasion into one that made us never, ever want to grace it with our presence again."

Bunch of Grapes

➤ 14 Silver St, Bradford-on-Avon BA15 1JY, United Kingdom

Kebab • Seafood • Asiatic • European

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"had a little work christmas party here and the food was great. really good quality and standard of food. good portions too. however, the staff at the bar created a table bill for drinks and when we went down to the bar, they insisted that we cannot pay for our drink separately from our table bill. this in turn created a large drink bill where they put a 20% service charge on top of all the drinks. the drinks took very long, some were forgotten and service was slow. the staff didnt seem like they knew how to handle large group bills as well. we had booked this a month beforehand and didnt seem prepared at all. when some of my colleagues tried to take off the OPTIONAL service charge, they argued that it couldn't be taken off. would go there again for food but wouldn't have high expectations for the service. Service: Dine in Meal type: Dinner Price per person: £30–40 Food: 5 Service: 2 Atmosphere: 3"