Cafe Retreat @ The Downs

The strangest café.
Poor design layout (the best view is behind the bar). Poor deco (think changing rooms circa 1999) and over priced. The coffee is passable at best and for £3.50 for a plate of toast and beans and not much of interest on the menu it’s stuck between a budget café and a local icon.
Crying out for investment

Nice location but there isn’t much choice and the the quality of the food is always disappointing. Today it was overcooked egg and cold mushrooms in a cheap bap.

Great location for a café. It is good for coffee and cake but average at best for bacon sandwiches or anything more substantial.

This is such a pretty little café and it’s situated in such a great location with beautiful views of the Clifton Downs. It sits just under a large tree and is an ideal place to grab a light bite to eat with a relaxing and chilled out atmosphere. They have very little indoor seating, however they have plenty of outdoor seating — during the summer months this café is particularly buzzing, and even if you cant get a seat then you can find somewhere to chill out on the grass.
The café doesn’t offer an extensive range of produce, however it’s great for grabbing an ice cream or a refreshment on a hot summers day. Prices are very reasonable, even though the selection isn’t great, and you can grab a sandwich for a few pounds. In the summer months there is generally a queue, but it’s also somewhere that offers toilet facilities which when you’re up on the downs for several hours definitely comes in handy!

The Downs are one of the most distinctive landmarks in Bristol, visited by tens of thousands of people every year. So, unsurprisingly there’s a great need for refreshments and this café fills that gap perfectly. Situated right in the middle of the Downs next to the unmistakable water tower, this place is easily used as a navigation tool or a convenient meeting place. It looks like a little cottage (which is kind of funny considering that one face of The Downs is a cottaging spot). There’s plenty of outdoor seating and they sell a decent range of drinks, both hot and cold. The best thing about this café is definitely the snacks though, the succulent home-​made cake, the crunchy flap jacks and the traditional biccies. The café is definitely one of the best things about the Downs, after all, without it all you’d have is yards and yards of green grass. The café makes it a year round destination.

This is the place to go for a cuppa on a summer afternoon in Bristol: an old-​style café popular with people enjoying a stroll across the lovely Clifton Downs.
Look out for the unsightly hulk of the concrete water tower, and the Victorian style café (once a toilet!) sits just in its shadow. It’s also right next to the current public toilets, so if you’re heading there for a toilet break you could combine it with a coffee stop.
This all means it gets packed out when the sun’s shining and the Downs are busy with kite-​flyers and families having picnics — so you’ll have to battle to get a seat.
They do sit-​in or take-​away coffee (not bad) and tea (fine), plus cold drinks, ice creams, stodgy cakes, and some more substantial snacks such as sandwiches and jacket potatoes.
If you’re out walking your dog, like so many people around there do, you can still go here for a drink and a slice of cake because there are tables outside where you can keep your pooch by your side and enjoy the views over the Downs. It can get a bit breezy when there’s a wind, but other than that it’s a fantastic spot on a fine day.

This cute little café is in the perfect place to attract the hundreds of people that come to relax, sunbathe or play in the sun on the Downs during the summertime. In fact, being next to the only toilet for miles around, I tend to go past this place a couple of times during a day of drinking with friends and always end up buying an ice cream or bottle of water to cool me off. A couple of times, I’ve also gone the whole hog and had some of their good old-​fashioned British hot food — I’m talking fish & chips, jackets and so on. I’ve yet to try their tea and coffee — it’s always been too hot for this whenever I’m there — but I imagine they are both up to the café’s high standards. Definitely go here at least once, if you’re out and about on the Downs.

This little tea room is nestled under a water tower, with Bristol Downs surrounding it. Their trade is mostly walkers and tourists, people with time on their hands. This makes for a completely different atmosphere to your typical coffee shop. People are never stressed or tetchy (this might be because not so many people are drinking coffee as well). The staff are busy but never rushed. Things are generally just a little bit more civilised.
They have the usual selection of tasty looking cakes to tempt you. A cup of tea is something difficult to get wrong and they don’t, thankfully. It’s pretty small and get’s full to bursting if the weather is good. I like coming here on a wet day (this will mean a bit of a trek if you haven’t got a car, just think of the nice warm cup of tea you’ll get on arrival) and feeling snug and warm. There’s a menu, with the sandwiches decent value for money. The Downs Tea Rooms is polite and well mannered, and a bit less manic than the usual coffee house.

This could well be my favourite eatery that’s based in a converted toilet in the whole of Bristol (and indeed quite possibly the whole of the south west region). This collision of bog and brasserie sits next to the water tower and is unsurprisingly rather small, though this doesn’t really matter as sitting out the front on the Downs is the whole point of the exercise.
Having said that, I wouldn’t wish to disparage the food which may be simple (baguettes, jacket spuds, fish and chips), but it comes in big portions and is extremely reasonably priced. And as an added bonus, you’ve got a fair chance of seeing top local celeb the JLC and his hairy brood enjoying a bite here. Be warned, I’ve driven past in the week before and it’s been shut, so it may well be a weekend only operation.