We really liked the Roth Bar and Grill. It was a cool, arty, sophisticated place – like a little bit of New York had been dropped in the middle of the Somerset countryside. We were a bit non-plussed to hear it had closed, the space reimagined as an Italian called Da Costa.
The décor evokes a mountain lodge: a big new wood-fired grill area in the corner; stacked logs and hanging copper pans; rustic woven baskets nestling on the rafters; strings of dried peppers and garlic trailing down the walls; candles in wine bottles on the damasked tables. There are still a few pictures on the walls, but only as part of the set-dressing.
The menu, which was supplemented by an almost-as-long handwritten specials board, is divided into antipasti, pasta, risotto and things from the grill. With £13 for a tomato salad, and wood pigeon with mushroom and truffle sauce and crispy frico for £39, the bill can mount up.
Obviously, none of this would matter if the food were great. However, despite the great and often home-grown ingredients and the obvious technical skill of the large team of chefs, we found both a starter of grilled sweet and sour tardivo, and main course of schlutzkrapfen (half-moon shaped stuffed pasta), one dimensional and underwhelming.
The tardivo, cooked over a wood flame and dressed in sweet vinegar was good – smoky, sweet and bitter all at once though a bit samey after the third bite – but it came with an unadvertised, unnecessary and tasteless sludge of brown walnut sauce, which added nothing. Ditto the one-dimensional pumpkin sauce that accompanied the pumpkin-stuffed schlutzkrapfen. The pasta itself was very well made and perfectly cooked, but the filling and sauce tasted the same. The pine nuts and abundant olive oil just amplified the pumpkin rather than gave it any complexity or flavour counterpoints - even the sage didn’t really make any impact.
However, raspberry, ricotta and almond cake with clotted cream was perfectly decent, service from a large team was fine, and the clientele looked like a well-heeled arty crowd. But we wouldn’t go back. Not because it’s bad, but because it’s pricy and felt inauthentic. Within walking distance there is more interesting food cooked with passion and served with charm at Briar, and great pizza in a cool, unusual building at At The Chapel. Really couldn’t see how it related to the Hauser and Wirth gallery and its modern sculpture exhibitions. (In fact, the Roth Bar has been hived off and relocated to another part of the gallery. It still exists – sans food - in all its crazy steampunk glory).
WHERE: Durslade Farm, Dropping Lane, Bruton, Somerset BA10 0NL
FOLLOW: @dacosta.somerset
BOOK: da-costa.co.uk
