Review: Allium, Best Western Abbey Hotel, North Parade, Bath

Last time I looked, Bath was pretty disappointing when it came to recommendable restaurants. It also suffered an inexplicable dearth of off-licences, and the people in the street were all wearing beanie hats. A year later, there's a new off-licence called Independent Spirit, specialising in posh malt whiskies, and the locals in the street are now all wearing BacoFoil shawls (I found out later they'd been running a marathon and were equilibrating their body-heat) ? and there are now three brasseries to choose from ? Bill's, The Tramshed (no relation of Mark Hix's chicken-or-steak joint) and Brasserie Blanc. But the happiest surprise is that when the Abbey Hotel changed hands last summer, the new owner installed Chris Staines to run the restaurant, which is re-named Allium, the genus which contains onions, leeks and garlic.

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