Start The Bus

Pretty cool. It’s changed hands so many times that I have forgotten what it once was, but now it’s just about right for me. Nice enough food, nice at night with a group and nice for a little boogie downstairs if you fancy it. Good fun.

I’ve never been here during the night time, but I’ve been here for roasts and food during the evening/​daytime and I’ve always had a good time. The food is amazing. It’s like. American Diner style food; overnight milk soaked deep friend chicken, a tasty array of burgers, Mac and Cheese, ribs, etc. The wait time on the food can hit an hour pretty quickly, so it’s best not to leave it too late unless you are there for the duration/aren’t starving.
They also have a lot of vintage stalls and markets running from time to time which can be a lot of fun.
I’d say it’s your a-​typical Bristol venue, right in the centre of town. A bit hippy/​a bit arty/​a bit hipster and quite laid back.
It’s also quite spacious, which gives off a not too busy vibe even when it is :)
Will always come here when we visit Bristol, unless it changes ;)

Start The Bus is an excellent place in the centre of Bristol. An extremely casual place, it’s my go to location to hang out and kill some time.
The burgers are excellent, and with the decent supply of beers on tap, it’s good casual food. Reasonably priced.
Followup: the sweet potato fries at delicious

The food was great and the service the was very good. The drinks are a bit over priced but it was worth it for the nice atmosphere.

Start the Bus is just around the corner from where I work so I come here occasionally some lunchtimes, the last time being a couple of days ago. I always go for one of the three veggie burgers they do. The food is nice, but you get the impression that chef was in a hurry when he put it together. Its adequate, don’t expect anything special. Really nice staff working here though, friendly, helpful, sometimes funny.

Bit of a let-​down Start the Bus!
Not sure if we caught them on an off-​day, as usually STB is reliably tasty and generous with its food. However when we went to take advantage of their 2−4−1 Tuesday Burger deal, we were greeted by a bar with no beer! Or at least no ale on tap, which is my tipple of choice. I know it’s a school night guys, but come on!
Having finally selected a palatable lager, I went for the chicken and avocado burger and my much more adventurous partner in crime picked the audacious donut burger.
The food arrived seemingly moments after we got back to our seats. Can’t fault them on speed. But again my heart sank a little when I saw what arrived. Cold anaemic fries, in a portion fit for a health conscious mouse with a rather small looking burger on both plates. What’s more the beef burger was overdone, not the juicy delight anticipated.
We went home hungry and a little sad. Hope this is just a blip and not the taste of things to come!

Really is the best alternative bar In Central Bristol, this place really belongs on Gloucester rd !! Wicked ambience for a bar in town. The bar is well stocked and the do have some interesting things on the menu, the pickled onion monster munch burger is always going to be a winner in my mind and the fish finger sandwich are awesome. Me and the Mrs «shared» a piece of salted caramel cheesecake. As any man who’s «shared» a dessert with there girlfriend knows you have to get in there quick !! And the couple of crumbs she left me were amazing !!
Quite often there is a band on in here, they often surprise you with a good booking such as ‘fat white family ’ or The horrors doing a dj set. Give it a go… you never know you might enjoy yourself

More quirky than classy but this is one of my favourite bars in Bristol. It’s arty and lively and there’s often live music. The food is good pub grub (served-​in-​a-​plastic-​basket type food). The burgers have weird optional extras like beef monster munch and macaroni cheese and there’s Red Stripe on tap! Win!
I like it for a quick beer with friends and on a night out. It’s the kind of bar that’s a safe option if you can’t think where to go but be prepared for it to be a bit grubby and make sure you’re a bit drunk before you use the ladies!

I’m reviewing Start the Bus from a casual visitor’s point of view, which means I ordered food, a beer and hung out with some friends for an hour or so. I didn’t hear any live music, and it wasn’t late.
So, the food: mine was a grilled chicken burger on what I think was a sesame seed brioche bun (though I could be wrong) with added chorizo, and chilli jam on the side. I also went for the cajun chips, which were actually normal chips with seasoning. Being Tuesday, it was 2−4−1 on burgers.
It wasn’t an amazing burger, but I was hungry and enjoyed it enough to finish the whole lot. The chicken was dry, which means slightly overcooked, and I didn’t like the chilli jam (but that’s my fault, not the burger bar’s). I haven’t tried chilli jam before, so it was an experiment!
There are better burgers to be had in Bristol, but I actually like the way Start the Bus puts chunks of chorizo in rather than slices, which many other places do. It added texture as well as flavour, and I’m a sucker for chorizo! There are so many toppings to choose from, from the traditional to the unusual (Monster Munch anyone?), and I slurped a bottle of Peroni straight from the fridge to quiet the burning sensation from the cajun chips.
The vibe was chatty and relaxed, with more space than I was expecting, and there are seats outside for sunny days. It has the old tables and chairs that almost every ‘hip’ foodie bar seems to have these days (there must be a lot of old schools closing down around the country!) and it’s dark enough that you don’t know what evil may lurk on the floor.
The toilets are spacious but full of graffiti, which made me wonder whether it was a part of the ‘look and feel’ or if a teenager had grumbled with the management over his dry chicken and had done a spray job on the fittings and fixtures. Either way, I’m probably too old to appreciate Start the Bus in all its live music glory (which, apparently, it is good at), its graffiti décor and spicy chips, and perhaps too young to enjoy an afternoon nursing a bottle or two of wine with older chums.
I’ll nip back and try a coffee.

Definitely go here on a Tuesday night when the delicious handmade burgers are 2−4−1.
Between us we had the avocado and bacon burger and the pickled onion monster munch burger. Yes pickled onion monster munch. What a simple yet inventive idea.
Delicious spicy chips, mmmm, mmmm, mmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Really couldn’t fault this place. Friendly bar staff, great food at a reasonable price. I will definitely be coming back again.

Best alternative bar in central Bristol. Good food served by day and you can catch some great live music on a evening from local start outs to the occasional international star. Highly recommended if you’re not looking for the usual ‘towny’ night out in central Bristol. A good start off point before making your way to Mr Wolfs for a boogie. :)

Looking for good food, great music, drinks offers and an ultra cool, casual vibe in the centre of Bristol? You’ll struggle to do better than Start the Bus!
Start the Bus is my ‘old trusty’ bar in the centre of town. While the centre offers some great places to eat, a few good bars and a number of good music venues, Start the Bus is probably the only one that delivers on all fronts. You could chuck the Big Chill in as well I suppose, but it doesn’t feel anywhere near as casual.
The food is good, big and tasty, but nothing-​to-​write-​home-​about. The menu is meat heavy: create your own burgers, pulled pork and hot dogs. I have eaten a number of times and never been disappointed, but never been blown away either. It is what it is and it’s good at it!
Start the Bus is, at its core, a great music venue. Matt, the Manager, books some really big live and electronic acts. I saw Hot Chip there a couple of years ago which was awesome. It was wall to wall rammed and such a good atmosphere. Start the Bus is good for a boogie almost every night of the week, which means it is busy and buzzy most nights; hence ‘old trusty’
There are sofas, booths, benches and tables and chairs which are all set over a couple of levels. The drinks menus is vast with pretty much anything you’d ever want from a bar. They do awesome hot chocolates, if thats your sort of thing!
Start the Bus, in my eyes, is probably the best all-​rounder in the centre and one of my favorites in Bristol.

Particular commendable for its spacious seating area and clean toilets. STB also punches above its weight for club nights — I personally quite like the 90s House party on the first Friday of every month.

Very cool bar, loads of seating space featuring a variety of comfy sofas and chairs. Drinks seemed wildly expensive in comparison with the Syndicate’s specials (note: Syndicate and Start The Bus are in no way alternatives) but I guess £14 for 3 spirits/​mixers isn’t crazy by London standards. Music could have been better — I think they would have seen a lot more people on the dance floor if better known tunes had been playing, even if they wanted to maintain the retro cool vibe. I think the cost of drinks/​music issues are probably what made it surprisingly quiet for a Friday night, not that it’s at all a bad thing I wasn’t constantly getting trod on. Overall a great location to hang out.

MAC & CHEESE BURGERS.
Normally that’d be ’nuff said, but they *also* happen to have the most amazing chips on the planet. Double-​cooked just like Five Guys back in the states.
Feels like The Vortex in Atlanta in both sight and spirit, which is one of the best compliments I can levy against a European burger joint.

A great little arty pub. While visiting Bristol my fiancé and I had a nice pub dinner here. The food was tasty. The service was fast and friendly (and we were even given a card by our server/​bartender, Mark). I’d go back if I found myself in Bristol again.

With all the doodles on the walls, quirky mismatching furniture and random, community events going on here you would be forgiven for thinking that Start The Bus is an independent bar but, sadly, you would be wrong.
While there is nothing else like this place in Bristol it is part of a bigger chain but this does mean a better selection of food and drink and some fantastic gigs to attend.
I regularly come here for the weekend events — every other Sunday there is usually a market of some kind where you can fins the best local crafts and vintage clothes. Marketed as a jumble sale there are trestle tables placed around the seating areas and once you’re bored of browsing homemade clothes and accessories you can treat yourself to roast dinner — yum! Speaking of tasty food, if you’re looking for a snack to share, try the huge bowl of nachos. A fair cry from Doritos and the like, these chips are massive and really tasty, especially when dipped in the accompanying guacamole.
The bar staff are friendly and the venue itself is available for hire which makes it popular with local art students looking for fund-​raising nights to raise money for their graduate exhibitions. Bands and DJs are a regular occurrence throughout the week and Start The Bus has also taken part in local music festivals such as Dot to Dot.

Start the Bus is the cause and cure of many of my most memorable Bristol hangovers. By day — a chilled out indie hangout, perfect for massive breakfast fry ups and cups of tea whilst sitting on a huge comfy sofa. By night, a happy hippy joint, perfect for dancing, drinking and checking out the cool kids.
STB is the sister venue of Camden’s Lock Tavern and shares many of its best qualities; fun, frolics and fairy lights. But I’ve found the Bristol’s quirky bar to be much less pretentious, and inevitably far less edgy, than the Tavern. The very trendy boys and girls who work here and so smiley and welcoming it might put the too-​cool-​for-​school crowd off, but I love it.
A prisoner of its own success, sometimes STB gets a bit too busy which makes dancing (the very thing I love to do there!) very difficult and often causes you to bump into the cool kids, making yourself looking very uncool in doing so. Definitely worth a visit, even if it’s just as part of a bar crawl.

Start the Bus has basically had a stab at being all things to all people, and despite the scale of its ambition made a pretty good fist of it. Bar? Check. Diner? Check. Club? Check. Gig venue? Check. Jumble sale? Check. Most impressively of all, it’s a venue right in the centre of Bristol which manages to be stylish and not full of ****s!
During the evening it’s open late most nights, putting on gigs and club nights, while during the day it churns out some tasty grub and hosts some quirky events (especially on Sundays when they have the aforementioned jumble sales and flea markets).
One tip: sign up for a Start the Bus card at the bar and you can get selected drinks for about £2 a pint or so on Sunday to Thursday nights. Entry is usually free/​a couple of quid, so if you like indie/​electro, this place is guaranteed to get your motor running.

For the music, the scence and the atmosphere this is one of the best bars I’ve been to in all of this fine country.
Sure, you’ll have to swim through a sea of hipsters and Klaxon-​wannabees to get to the bar, but don’t let that put you off as Start The Bus is one of the friendliest all around perfect bars you could visit.
If you come late expect live acts of considerable talent to be banging on til the wee-​est of hours. They’ve had Switch, MSTRKRFT and Ladyhawke play here in the past, not on a big stage, but just on a platform right by the cracking little dancefloor. If you like electro-​indie which I surely do, then you’lll love the sounds here even if all the ironic T-​shirts and assymetrical haircuts have you wincing.
Aside from the music, the décor is sweet… with cute cartoon designs all around and a lovely red, black and white colour scheme in homeage to London’s routemaster buses. There are some of the most comfortable old leather sofas and an assortment of board games for daytime timespending.
It’s just a shame I don’t live anywhere near Bristol