10:30 - 18 July 2002

If you travel along the bottom of Southgate Street every day during rush hour you are likely to know it mainly as a bottleneck. Traffic queues from the lights near the Peel Centre at the top of the Bristol Road all the way up to the roundabout with Kimbrose Way and on down Commercial Road. In both directions.

You are unlikely to peer out of your vehicle window and think to yourself, 'that looks like a good place to eat out' as you crawl past some of its pubs, apart from, perhaps, when you pass the rather fine looking Blossoms Chinese Restaurant.

But if you pull into the docks and venture back out onto Southgate Street on foot, you might see the road in a different light.

You don't need to go far to find good food. At the entrance gates to the docks is The Tall Ship public house.

On a Friday or Saturday night the pub is still a popular drinking spot, offering the compulsory loud music, pool table, bar football and big screen entertainment.

But if you think that is all The Tall Ship offers you will be missing what must easily be some of the best seafood dishes in the city, certainly better value than some much more expensive restaurants.

Seafood on the Docks, as the restaurant side of the pub is called, will prepare and cook you a lobster (pre-ordered with 24 hours notice), crab claws and crevettes, shark steak, tuna steak, sea bass, seafood risotto, fresh salmon fillet, grey mullet, sea bream.

As I sat down at a table with my partner a rather well spoken man from Bristol, who had come up to see the docks with his wife, was loudly praising the bar staff on his meal.

"Very, very good. Very good indeed. And the sweets were something else. Good value too," he said, leaning back from a table scattered with just finished dishes.

I half suspected he might be a plant, put there by the management. Until I tasted the food for myself that is.

My partner ordered half green lip mussels with crusty bread (£4.50) for her starter and I opted for the soup of the day (vegetable £2.50).

The soup also came with a thick slice of crusty, fresh granary bread and was very nice. But it was the mussels, which stole the prize for best starter.

My main course, risotto of sea food (£5.95), I had eaten before. This one was different, but just as good. I was presented with a bowl three quarters full of rice, whole tiger prawns, large crab claws still stuffed with meat, prawns, mussels still in their shells and chunky pieces of fish.

The salad contained fruit including water melon, oranges and grapes and just in case this stomach fill portion wasn't enough, another sizeable slice of crusty bread and butter.

My partner's comfit of duck (£6.95) was equally generous and tasty. A bed of baby new potatoes, basted in garlic butter with an equally appetising salad and, of course, a slice of crusty bread.

We had no room left, unfortunately, for a pudding, but I recommend the substantial pancake menu. Like the seafood, another speciality of The Tall Ship.