‘Ye Shakespeare’ calls itself one of Bristol’s oldest pubs, which is suspiciously widespread claim to the point it’ll inevitably boil over into some kind of Battle Royale but with more arson. Despite it being just across the bridge from the Old City/Castle Park, I’d never yet explored this side of the river – a night out with a friend (and the fact that Wetherspoons was packed for the Six Nations) led us to this pleasantly cosy spot.

LET’S GET DOWN TO CHEESINESS

Hidden underneath a stapled-on paper advertising their specials, the menu proudly advertised Chips at £2.95, and ‘with cheese’ at £3.50 (the same markup for putting cheese on some garlic bread, which sounds like its own world of adventure). My friend and I ordered a bowl each and grabbed the only space available in the corner.

Either time flew fast or the service was great, because their arrival definitely took me by surprise. Most of the bowl had a shiny layer of cheese the exact same colour as the chips, but a large corner (on a round bowl?) was left entirely untouched.

The chips themselves were proper thick-cut chunks, each one about the largest you could possibly cut one before you’d just be dealing with a bisected potato. The outside was a perfectly al-dente skin without being in the slightest bit crispy, but the interior was a little dry and fluffy for my liking – almost as if you were biting into a starchy cloud.

The cheese was overwhelmingly well-done (except for a few ends of strands left intact) – the one downside was that there wasn’t enough to give each one a good dollop, just a thin coating over most of them.

ROUNDUP

PRICE: £2.95 + 55p
CHIPS: Perfect form, but the inside dryness let it down
CHEESE: Decent melt, too little across the bowl 😦
INNOVATION: None whatsoever.
PRETENTIOUSNESS: Between “Olives, Sun Dried Tomatoes and Ciabatta” and “Home beer battered onion rings”, I was expecting something a *little* better
OVERALL: A bit of an unmemorable let-down, thanks to the overall dryness