Metro reviews

Wednesday, June 03, 2009 - From the open kitchen, wonderful smells wafted from the charcoal oven and grill on which the mains are cooked. The menu is about as candid as it gets: swordfish, monkfish, sea bass, it reads, with a choice of sauce, garlic butter or seafood mayonnaise. A signature main dish of shellfish roasted with garlic and parsley – half a lobster, one scallop roasted in its shell, a handful of mussels, clams and sizeable shrimps – was brilliantly varied and superbly fresh, but small for the money. Roasted skate fell off the bone, beautifully drowning in black butter and given a kick with capers; it was utterly divine.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009 - I stopped in one morning and discovered that the new landlord is Nick Armitage, owner of The Picturehouse just down the road and The Kingsdown Vaults in Cotham. He has clear ambitions for The King's Arms: to turn it back into a pub with bags of character, a serious wine list and a menu that makes folk more than happy to trudge up Blackboy Hill…The food we ate and the wine we drank, without wanting to gush, were nothing short of fantastic. In head chef Todd Francis, Armitage has clearly found a man he can trust with his reputation.