Restaurant


Archangel N


ow this is a tricky one. There are very few places we’ve been to that cause such a-humming and a-


hah’ing. So here’s a warning: there’s a lurking ‘on the one hand. . . but on the other’-ness about this review. The Archangel is that sort of place. Forearmed is forewarned, and


our cards had duly been marked by the barman in a nearby cocktail bar. “What’s the Archangel like, then..?” we asked, innocently. He stood still, silent – presumably thinking. The bar was otherwise empty, we


were looking at each other, and the pause went on long enough to be embarrassing; and then a bit longer. When he’d got his dramatic pause out of the way, he then didn’t say anything. There’s a thin line between politeness and omerta, and he vaulted it. On pressing, he offered, “You’ll


have to make your own mind up.” Great. The Grade-II listed Archangel


has had a ton of money spent on it, rumoured to be £2m – a real labour of love and cash and imagination to convert it from a big old central


34 Bath Life Restaurant Guide www.mediaclash.co.uk


An ambitious, bold, distinctive gastro-pub-cum-restaurant-cum-boutique hotel: the Archangel demands an opinion. So what did ALASDAIR WHITELAW make of it?


Saturday night pub to a sophisticated would-be Babingtonesque gastro- pub-restaurant-with-rooms. Parts of it are said to date back to the Domesday Book. It is so large and still Medievally-influenced that it has an indoor ‘street’. At first blush though, it was a tad


disappointing. The entrance on King Street felt a little like a Malmaison, but went straight on to a bar in a narrowish corridor where the staff were busy serving customers who made the corridor even narrower. There was no welcome or, indeed, contact of any sort – no sense of this


Photograph © Iain Kemp


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