Saturday 25th January

Westbury-on-Trym on the outskirts of Bristol might not be the first place you would expect to find a world class restaurant, but that is what the Sanches-Iglesias brothers have achieved with Casamia. Formerly an Italian tratttoria run by their English mother and Spanish father the brothers have, since 2006, turned it into a venue of gastronomic pilgrimage for anyone interested in the best of modern British cooking. Casamia won a Michelin star in 2009, and the AA who have since awarded them 4 rosettes and the brothers are still improbably young. Jonray, the older of the two is 29, and Peter, who appeared with distinction in the Great British Menu, is 27. The dish titles on their menus are plain to the point of terse – Quiche Lorraine; chilled cucumber soup, red mullet, capsicum family; peaches and cream. What the happy customer gets is rather different. Jonray and Peter have mastered the full panoply of modern kitchen techniques and technology to create a highly individual culinary identity. Water baths, gels, liquid nitrogen, spherification all find their purpose realizing the dishes generated by the extraordinary imagination of the brothers. But if that all sounds a bit like the clinical creations of the lab, you’ll be in for a surprise. The Sanchez-Iglesias brothers’s food manages to be elegant and satisfying by turns, full of drama and delights, with unexpected combinations, twists and turns, easy on the eye, and even easier on the tummy.