It’s hotly tipped that both Raymond Blanc and Antonio Carluccio will be opening branches of their highly-acclaimed national chains in the city this year, with sites including the restaurant formerly known as Brasserie Gerard (Grand Parade) and the Francis Hotel dining rooms (Queens Square) both the subject of hot makeover gossip. Both Raymond and Antonio, however, could be considering new homes in the £12m scheme currently under wraps around Bath Spa railway station, resulting in the last phase of the £360m SouthGate redevelopment scheme. The flagship location at the heart of the project will be based at the top of the car park area and offer views across the railway lines (hoorah? Hardly!) while six other restaurant units are being built under the existing 19th century building itself. Development director Jon Munce says that head honchos are considering proposals from a mix of national and independent restaurateurs, but adds that ultimately, [the project] will be “commercially driven”. Meanwhile, it looks highly likely that Italian-themed restaurant chain Prezzo will be moving in to the controversial Bluecoat House redevelopment (Upper Borough Walls) while the whole Sawclose area in general is likely to be given some sort of commercial makeover courtesy of our friends at BANES council this summer. Doom or development? Only time will tell.

Elsewhere, the brand new Roman Baths Cafe is set to erase the nightmare that was Binks on Abbey Churchyard this spring, and brand new venture The Ivy is due to open at a site on Pulteney Bridge any moment now.
What next? Whatever it is, you’ll read about it here first. Got any hot gossip yourself? We’d love to hear from you! Happy New Year, one and all.

What The Pig finds most difficult to understand about the new plans is L&R’s claim that the outdoor seating associated with Parisien “leads people to believe that the predominant use [of the area] is for the Café  only, and so people wouldn’t necessarily [come in and] explore the space unless they were specifically looking for a Café”. Try telling that to our European cousins, who’s loveliest, liveliest shopping enclaves revolve around Café s, bars and restaurants. And, seeing as Milsom Place is currently a bit of ghost town dominated by empty retail units and temporary, pop-up concessions with only the Café s and restaurants apparently thriving, might the new plans be a handful of coffin nails rather than a form of live-affirming ‘regeneration’? Somebody needs to take time out for a serious rethink – and fast.

In 2011, Bath waved goodbye to the Moon, No 5, the Walrus and Carpenter and Say Pasta. Meanwhile, a branch of successful national chain Brasserie Gerard has recently gone into liquidation, and long-term residents of the Podium have been forced to move on to make way for the Waitrose expansion. More than 300 Parisien/Solo customers have already signed a petition calling on council planners to reject the application for changes at Milsom Place (you’ll find it on the counter at Parisien). Add your voice to the protest now before two more independent Bath businesses are forced to bite the dust.

Bargain: The Garrick’s Head (www.garricksheadpub.com) Otter Valley Chicken, free range, locally sourced beef/pork…and perfect goose fat roasted potatoes: £10.95

Blowout: The Wheatsheaf (www.wheatsheafcombehay.co.uk) sample menu includes wild mushroom soup with truffle oil; roast sirloin of Devizes beef with Yorkshire pud and real roasties; apple and blackberry crumble and custard: 2/3 courses £19.50/£24.50

City centre: The Cork (www.thecork.co.uk) highly recommended by foodie supremo (and dedicated Pig follower) @tweetand2veg, who promises that the Cork’s roasties are rollickin’! Knowing the Cork, it ain’t gonna blow the budget, either…

Massive portions: The Pulteney Arms (www.thepulteneyarms.co.uk): Try the ‘Rugby Boy Roast’ (£12.95) as recommended by @ittookten who says it’s “suitable for a small family…or Danny Grewcock!”

Smart a la carte: The Chequers (www.thechequersbar.com) sample menu includes pressed ham hock set in parsley jelly, pickles & toasted sourdough (£6.95); roasted leg of salt marsh lamb with bread sauce, roasties and seasonal vegetables (£15.50); chocolate & mandarin mousse, honeycomb & biscotti (£6.50) – according to @LorenJDiclaudio, it’s a winning formula every time.

Think laterally: The King William (www.kingwilliampub.com) sample menu includes devilled kidneys on toast; roast loin of Warleigh lodge pork, apple sauce, duck fat potatoes & pan gravy; blackberry & apple crumble soufflé & vanilla ice-cream 2/3 courses £19.95/£24.95…or make like @thedecentrogues and go for a pint of real ale and a slab of game pie instead.

Families: The Bear (www.bearbath.co.uk) sample menu includes slow roast shoulder of lamb, 28-day aged sirloin with horseradish sauces and pork belly with Granny Smith apple sauce, all served with butternut squash, parsnips, Yorkshire pudding and peas with kid’s portions available at £6, £7.50 and £5 consecutively – good call!

Have we missed anybody out? Let us know – the Pig is open all hours!

The idea for the Bath Good Food Awards came about when The Pig Guide joined forces with Guide2Bath in order to promote, celebrate and acknowledge the local chefs, restaurateurs and food producers that give Bath its glowing reputation as the jewel in the West Country foodie crown. Although several smaller awards ceremonies are dotted hither and thither throughout the city’s annual social calendar, nominations for the existing events tend to only be available to advertisers in one specific publication. While such an arrangement doesn’t necessarily distract from the aims of such an occasion, it’s a far from democratic system that often offers a far from satisfying outcome. To this end, the Bath Good Food Awards opened nominations up to every business in every category and asked members of the public to cast their votes online or on cards delivered to each establishment. An illustrious panel of independent judges and ‘mystery’ diners spent many long weeks visiting the shortlisted restaurants and tasting samples from the nominated food producers before eventually agreeing on the overall winners. The full list of gong-holders (see below) reads like a who’s who of the Bath food scene and offers inspiration for those who either want to follow in their footsteps or explore the best eating out experiences that the city has to offer.

It’s a shame that none of the established local or national print publications – either freely distributed or paid-for – gave a single column inch to an event that one can only deduce was seen as a threat to their own profile and/or advertising budget. In these cash-hungry times, however, perhaps such a reaction is, on one level, understanding. But despite the lack of support from the ‘conventional’ media, The Bath Good Food Awards represented a celebration of a community standing together against the harsh winds of a chilling economic climate to regenerate a spirit of optimism; to describe the whole event as the biggest glittering prize that the Heritage City has earned itself in a very long time would be an understatement. Bring on the BGFA 2012!

And the Winners are:

Best Restaurant: Casanis
Highly commended: demuths

Best Chef: Sam Moody, Bath Priory
Highly commended: Laurent Couvrieur, Casanis

Best Family Friendly: Giraffe
Highly commended: Lime Lounge

Best Gastropub: Ring o’Bells
Highly commended: White Hart

Best Romantic table-for-two: Dower House at Royal Crescent
Highly commended: The Circus

Best Seafood: Loch Fyne

Best Asian: Yen Sushi
Highly commended: PanAsia

Best Italian: Martinis
Highly commended: Jamie’s Italian

Best Indian: Rajpoot
Highly commended: Jamuna

Best Vegetarian: demuths
Highly commended: Yak Yeti Yak

Best Bath Institution: Beaujolais
Highly commended: demuths

Best Newcomer: PanAsia
Highly commended: Sam’s Kitchen

Best Sunday Lunch: Chequers
Highly commended: Hop Pole

Best Front of House: The Circus
Highly commended: Marlborough Tavern

Best Up & Coming: Same, Same but Different
Highly commended: Cafe Lucca

Best Cafe: Lime Lounge
Highly commended: Sam’s Kitchen

Best Chain: Cote Brasserie
Highly commended: Jamie’s Italian

Best Alfresco: Marlborough Tavern
Highly commended: Bath Priory

Best Sandwich: – Jika Jika
Highly commended – Sam’s Kitchen

Best Breakfast: Sam’s Kitchen
Highly commended: Jazz Cafe

Best Fine Dining Wine List: Bath Priory
Highly commended: Olive Tree

Best Wine List: Hudsons
Highly commended: Bistro La Barrique

Best Independent Food Producer: Elements for Life
Highly commended: Bath Pig Co, Wiltshire Chilli Company

People’s Choice Award: demuths
Highly commended: Firehouse Rotisserie

Congratulations to all this year’s winners.

Special thanks to Guide2Bath head honcho Bernard Aherne and the judging/tasting panel, including Guardian food and wine writer Fiona Beckett, director and founder of the Love Food Festivals Lorna Knapman and award-winning chef, baker and food writer Richard Bertinet, alongside wine consultant and compere for the ceremony itself, Angela Mount.

Nominations were invited for a range of categories and soon started to flood in; the judging team have some tough decisions to make before the glittering awards ceremony which is to be held at the Guildhall on Tuesday 4 October (see Pig News for the full lowdown).

Meanwhile, the nominees for the Bath Good Food Awards (sponsored by Waitrose & Great Western Wine) are as follows:

Best Family Friendly Giraffe, Lime Lounge, Komedia, Cote, Café Retro

Best Gastro Pub Chequers, Hop Pole, Marlborough Tavern, Wheatsheaf, Ring O’Bells, White Hart

Best Restaurant Firehouse Rotisserie, demuths, Casanis, The Chequers, Circus, Beaujolais, Hudsons Bar & Grill

Best Romantic Table for Two Casanis, Opa, Circus, La Perla, Dower House at the Royal Crescent Hotel

Best Seafood Loch Fyne, One Beaufort, Same Same But Different, One Fish Two Fish, Seafoods

Best Asian, Yen Sushi, Pan Asia, Yum Yum Thai, Yak Yeti Yak, Hon Fusion

Best Italian Italian Pizza Co, Bottellinos, Martini, Jamie’s Italian, Aio

Best Indian Jamuna, Rajpoot, The Boojon, Panahar

Best Vegetarian demuths, the Bath Priory, Wild Café, the Porter, Yak Yeti Yak

Best Bath Institution demuths, Woods, Beaujolais, Green Park Brasserie, Marmaris

Best Newcomer Sam’s Kitchen, Pan Asia, Cote, Giraffe, Cosy Club

Best Sunday Lunch, the Hop Pole, Chequers, One Beaufort, the Wheatsheaf, the Bath Priory

Best Front of House Circus, Casanis, Giraffe, Beaujolais, Firehouse Rotisserie,  Marlborough Tavern

Best Chef Casanis, Chequers, demuths, the Bath Priory, Bistro La Barrique

Most promising up-and-coming Chef Hop Pole, One Beaufort, Same Same but Different, Café Lucca, Charlie Hacker (Gascoyne Place)

Best Cafe Food Sam’s Kitchen, Jazz Café, Café Retro, Café Lucca, Lime Lounge, the Brougham Cupboard, Best of British

Best Sandwich Best of British, Same Same but Different, Sam’s Kitchen, Jika Jika, Out to Lunch

Best Chain Giraffe, Cote, Las Iguanas, Jamie’s Italian, Wagamama

Best Alfresco Marlborough Tavern, the Bath Priory, Beaujolais, Bistro La Barrique, Market

Best Breakfast Sam’s Kitchen, Café Retro, Riverside Café, Wild Café, Jazz Cafe

Best Fine Dining Wine List, the Dower House at the Royal Crescent Hotel, the Bath Priory, the Olive Tree at the Queensberry Hotel

Best Wine List (excluding Fine Dining) Firehouse Rotisserie, Casanis, Hudsons Bar & Grill, Bistro La Barrique

Best Local Producers, Elements for Life, Wiltshire Chilli Company, Charlie’s Bakery, Thoughtful Bread Co, Bath Cake Co, Bath Soft Cheese Co, Bath Pig Co, Ivor’s Ice cream

Many thanks to our fabulous judging team: Emily Wimsett, Cat & Kat (@Catherines), Tanya Rich, Ali Vowles, Lorna Knapman, Angela Mount, Richard Bertinet, Fiona Beckett, Silvana Tann and Lisa Speigal…and huge, massive Good Luck wishes to all our fabulous nominees!

This week, The Pig is mostly…

…awarding Gold Stars to easygoing Bath cafe society hotspot the Adventure Cafe and upmarket Indian bistro the Rajpoot, both highly recommended for Services to the Palate and general good times bonhomie by Twitter followers @stoddy33 and @RachieChalli4 respectively. Thanks for the tip, guys! Keep ‘em coming…

…eagerly anticipating further news on the Thoughtful Bread Co’s Real Bread Book; we’ve heard that the photo shoots are already underway; can’t wait to get the full lowdown on the doughdown!

…looking forward to meeting a whole host of guide2bath.com/Pig people at our collaboration celebration at Gascoyne Place on the evening of Wednesday 29 June…

…keeping very busy finalising plans for the forthcoming Bath Good Food Awards ceremony, taking place in October. Get on board and make your voting voice heard! You can already vote online at www.guide2bath.com, but good old fashioned voting slips and ballot boxes will be appearing in restaurants, cafes and bars around the Heritage City within the next two weeks. Exciting!

This week, The Pig is mostly…

…getting really excited about the impending new summertime menus currently being developed in the Gascoyne Place kitchen

…eagerly awaiting the Love Food Festival, coming to Green Park Station on Saturday 12 June

…hoping that David Campbell, one of The Pig’s favourite chefs, will remain secure in his role as Hob God at the helm in the Dower House restaurant now that the Royal Crescent Hotel is up for sale

…wondering why it’s impossible to find a straightforward sandwich on wholemeal bread at either of the cafe/takeaway outlets on Pulteney Bridge – doughy white baguettes are sooo last season, and pasties/roasting hot paninis do not an impromptu weirside picnic make

…lovin’ the extra alfresco opportunities offered by the Garrick’s Head (and starting a campaign to turn Sawclose into the traffic-free cafe society hotspot that the Heritage City so richly deserves – see Going Out blog for further details any day now)

There’s been an almighty mini-food fight going dominating our Twitter feed this past couple of weeks – but has it all really just been a storm in a teacup? To cut a long story short, what happened was this: lovely, lively George Street café Jika Jika levied a baby food ‘corkage’ charge of £1.40 (the same price the café charges for its own organic baby food). Bath mums who regularly visit JJ with their little ones in tow went absolutely crazy. As the furore raged the Bath Chronicle jumped on board, inevitably leading to a string of some very child un-friendly comments indeed. Meanwhile, the head honchos of Jika Jika – ever the gentlemen, it seems – gave the Twitter debate a wide berth but eventually quietly dropped the surcharge completely. Who was right in the first place: JJ or the yummies? If you’d like to continue the debate, we’d love to hear from you – but we won’t tolerate spiteful rants, okay? That’d be akin to throwing your toys out of the pram completely.

Foodie Festivities

The second Bath Coffee Festival (at the Recreation Ground, 22/23 May) is almost upon us. The Love Food festival is coming to Bath’s Green Park Station in June (see Pig news). The Flavours of the West festival is back in Milsom Place for a third year running in July (ditto). Has the Heritage City finally starting to wise up to the fact that Bath is at the epicentre of the most glorious produce market in the West? Time will tell…The Pig will be Tweeting live from all three foodie shebangs as they roll along, and publishing full reviews right here immediately following each one (food hangover permitting).

This week’s gold stars go to…

…Gascoyne Place: their Sunday night jazz sessions continue to go from strength to strength

…the Thoughtful Bread Co for the fabulous doughnuts rustled up to celebrate National Doughnut Week – hoorah!

…Hon Fusion in Widcombe for serving The Pig the best (and most authentic) Chinese food tasted since a trip to Beijing 10 years ago

No stars for…

…PizzaExpress for their ‘how low can we go’? pizza pricing Twitter campaign (every tweet brings the price down by a penny); sorry guys, this sort of thing makes you look as sad as your pizzas have become

…a restaurant that’s allegedly one of ‘Bath’s Best Institutions’ serving The Pig what amounted to a sloppy, lukewarm plate of 1970s student-style fare for the second time in two weeks. If it happens once more, the wallies responsible for such suddenly poor standards will be named and shamed

…Hall and Woodhouse, for apparently not even attempting to find an antidote for the bad attitude virus that seems to have affected their whole staff team despite an ongoing, constant string of Twitter complaints

Now The Pig is only too aware of just how stressful (and often, thankless) serving food to the public can be. It’s also an indisputable fact that the contrary nature of British weather doesn’t always allow the time to sort out extra staff whenever the sun shines. But given that we had fair warning that the recent bout of good weather would last at least five days, surely the staff working at the city’s hostelries couldn’t really have been as surprised as they seemed to be when more than two customers at a time ordered drinks and/or food?

Across the city, alfresco service policies changed faster than the clouds moved across the sky, while news of hour-long queues at a bar on Sawclose, a 50-minute wait for a sandwich at a pub across the square and an afternoon tea hotspot running out of cakes, ice and milk for tea at 3pm flooded into Pig HQ from disgruntled tweeters all over Bath. Meanwhile, deserted tables piled high with post-repast detritus left untouched since breakfast (if you were lucky enough to get it) kept the seagulls happy right across town. Is this a foretaste of summer in the city? The Pig hopes not…

Tales from the riverbank come to Walcot Street It may be the end of the line for the Ha! Ha! Bar and Canteen, but The Tramshed – a new venture on the same Walcot Street site – has filled the gap nicely. Two nights of ‘soft launches’ preceded the official opening on Friday 1 April, and The Pig was delighted to be invited along to the very first service. Overall, both the quality of the food (a huge, crowd-pleasing selection largely on a modern British/Mediterranean-influenced theme) was generally good (especially for a first night); only the stone-cold steaks needed a little bit more work. Meanwhile, having taken in the ambience (think, New York loft circa 1993), The Pig wasn’t surprised to learn that the Tramshed is in fact a brand new little sister for cool summertime hotspot Bathampton Mill, just up t’road; perhaps the plethora of fake zebra-skin throws and cheerful Aussie staff should have given the game away immediately? Anyway, so far, so good for the Tramshed; if they sort out those wholly unflattering overhead lights and perhaps introduce a few more lounging around opportunities to the mix (oh: and make sure those steaks are served hot!), they should do very nicely indeed.

In Eating Out world this week, The Pig is mostly…

…really looking forward to scoffing through the new menus at the Salamander and the Hop Pole in readiness to post a clutch of new listings, including a few of Bath’s nicest cafes…

…swooning at the feet of David Campbell, the Dower House at the Royal Crescent’s new(ish) head chef; if he doesn’t earn a Michelin star in the 2012 line-up, The Pig will demand to know pourquoi…

…wondering if the Bath Food and Drink Festival (which replaced the wretched Taste of Bath festival) will return to the city again this year – and if not, what will replace it?

In Eating Out world his week, The Pig is mostly…

…lovin’ the new menus at the Salamander. Expect to see a full and frank listing/review of this lovely, lively boozer appearing on the site in the next couple of weeks, along with the same level of rundown for the Hop Pole, Eat5Star, Cafe Retro, Roscoff Deli and Hansel und Gretel. While we’re at it, existing listings are set to be updated at the same time – nothing like a bit of a spring clean to keep The Pig looking shiny and new!…

…going carb crazy at the Thoughtful Bread Co’s stall in Green Park Market; scoffing like crazy at the Roscoff Deli and going TeaPig/brownie mental at Cafe Retro…

…eagerly awaiting more news from local lovelies The Loungers HQ about the Cosy Club that’s rumoured to be coming to SouthGate…

…still attempting to instigate a campaign to Make Strada Turn That Piped Music Off! Why should they be allowed to blast badly-copied, tinny versions of Paul Young songs across Sawclose every evening?…