Over the Rainbow and back to the 70s…
By The Rainbow Café Restaurant
10 Waterloo Street
Clifton
Bristol BS8 4BT
Tel: 0117 973 8937
Type: Small independent
Food: 1970s
Atmosphere: 1970s
Ethics: No sign of green credentials or seasonal foods
Cost: Under £7
By Ava Peroni
Down this little street in Clifton Village you will find a cluster of small, independent businesses. Being Clifton, the street is of course full of large four-wheel drives whose drivers don’t know how to park in narrow streets (or at all in fact – don’t get me started) but that aside you can feel the charm of it almost immediately as you turn off busy Princess Victoria Street.
One of these little businesses is called the Rainbow Café Restaurant. It was established in 1970 and hasn’t really changed since. The chunky, plastic rainbow striped handle on front door is the first giveaway, then the counter with its carrot cake, the mini kitchen with its domestic cooker that might well have been new when they moved in, the stripped pine floor, the bookshelves laden with old books and of course, the menu.
Rainbow Cafe, Clifton Village, Bristol
The 1970s has lost the naffness that was felt for it in the subsequent three decades, with the squirm-inducing memories of platform shoes, crimplene everything, feather cuts and hot pants; it has finally achieved the rosy hue of 1950s and 60s, that is to say, it is now a vintage decade. The Rainbow Café has done a rare thing and stayed just as it always was and has now come back into fashion.
The café (it is not in any way a restaurant despite the sign outside but no worse for that) felt welcoming and comfortable, if slightly chilly, and was clean and bright by contrast to the truly grey February day, with some good art work displayed on the walls.
On the left covering a whole wall is a floor to ceiling bookshelf stuffed with every conceivable kind of book, which you can buy or just read at your table. There was only one person serving and she gave a cheery if slightly harassed greeting. Another greeting from a large brown Labrador was far more laid back and a great sight to behold in these days of health and safety gone mad. He was an aesthetic and atmospheric enhancement, not a hygiene risk at all.
The menu consists of two soups, two quiches and a chick pea casserole. Il mio fratello Filippo chose the tomato and lentil soup with bread at £3.95, and I chose the bacon and leek quiche with Rainbow salads at £6.95. I could have had the cheddar and onion, and he could have chosen parsnip and apple soup. Neither of us was remotely tempted by the chickpea casserole – childhood memories perhaps.
The lady behind the counter firmly said the quiche would be warm in a way that brooked no argument should I have felt inclined. I didn’t, anything hot is good on a day like that. I had a Twinings ginger and lemon tea in a teeny weeny pot with a teeny weeny cup (Twinings are so ubiquitous and I simply don’t understand why when there are small and brilliant companies popping up everywhere selling far superior tissanes and herbal cure-all teas that taste loads better). Filippo had a ginger beer. Ginger creates internal heat you see, and given that the external heating was not massively effective this seemed a good plan.
We got chatting about this and that, family, business, dogs, art, mud, like you do on a wet Wednesday. The food came just as the niggle of something possibly taking too long had started in my head. It was prettily presented, the soup in a bowl on a large plate with a big wholemeal roll, curls of butter and a pile of grated cheddar which I thought was a nice touch, but poor old Filippo can’t eat cheese and butter so this was torture for him (ulcer you see, frets too much).
My quiche came with a few sticks of cooked carrot sprinkled with cumin seed, some baby salad leaves and a sliced tomato, all almost dressed with a smidge of vinegar and some oil, of the not-olive-virgin-or-otherwise variety. The combined salad’s saviour was a yummy potato and mayonnaisy one which was perfect.
The quiche looked like quiche, a nice sized slice and tasted just fine and with good pastry, although if there were any leeks in there they were hiding from me. It was barely room temperature so I am not sure what it was doing all that time in the oven. Not getting hot anyway. If the oven really is 40 years old that might account for it
The soup was hot, and full of lentils and chopped tomato. Its a hearty old soup that one, and this was no exception, but it wasn’t terribly interesting. The cheese would have helped but hey ho poor Filippo.
Our fellow diners were a group of chatty, elderly ladies, an elderly single gentleman with a book and his own rice cakes and a formidable woman of indeterminate age who flicked the corners of her newspaper with great vigour. It felt as though they had been there since the place opened and hadn’t changed at all either.
We didn’t have time for cake and anyway, il fratello isn’t allowed any so it would have been mean to eat it in front of him, and to be honest they didn’t look that tempting.
All told although I wouldn’t rush back to for the food, I will go back because it is ultimately a very charming place, a small relic from a less food fussy time where you could while away hours reading your way through the books, drinking tea, eating cakes, soups and quiches until the next time it comes into fashion.
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