Urban Standard restaurant group to open first site outside Bristol
The team behind Bristol bar and restaurants the Urban Standard and North Street Standard, is to open its first site outside the city, in Cardiff.
Hoping to be located on Whitchurch Road, the new site from owner Dom Wood (pictured) and business partner Tim Moores will be just over 2,500 sq ft, with 100-110 covers, and is expected to open in January next year. The name is as yet undecided, with potential titles including the Church Street Standard.
It will be the group's third location, and comes very soon after this year's opening of North Street Standard, and less than two years after the Urban Standard in January 2014.
The simple-yet-varied menu will stay very similar to the existing sites, overseen by executive chef Jasper Prickett. It will feature British-European dishes such as traditional Sunday roasts, small plates, mains and sides such as chargrilled Merguez sausage, a mezze plate, chorizo and pea fricassee, slow-roasted lamb, soup, truffled mac n' cheese, and fish pie. It also offers homemade sandwiches, pancakes, steak, brunch and desserts.
The price-point and menu are aiming to be reasonable enough for mid-week meals for local residents, but high-quality enough for destination dining at the weekends, with the decor focusing on bare bricks and other natural materials, in a similar vein to the Bristol sites.
Wood was also behind the 2009 Bristol bar WildWood, but sold it once the Standard group started to grow. There is one private investor in the current group.
Commenting on the new opening, Wood told The Caterer: "It's nerve-wracking a bit as I know Bristol very well, and although I've lived in Cardiff I don't know it as well. But we do attract people from interesting local businesses and focus on [residential] places 'with a lot of chimney pots', for want of a better phrase, so hopefully it will be the same there. There is a hell of a lot going on in Cardiff at the moment and it has a deservedly brilliant reputation."
January update: The Wild Wood - one year on >>
Latest video from The Caterer
