BVBG: La Ruca, Gloucester Road

Gloucester Road is one of the most interesting parts of Bristol. Famed for being the UK’s longest independent high street (not sure if that’s still true), it’s home to all the cliche Bristol stuff, like Banksy artwork and old crusties not wearing shoes. Nestled in amongst a wine shop (I resisted) and a good number of charity shops is La Ruca, a family-run cafe situated above a teeny weeny health food shop.

Their everyday menu is Spanish/Mexican, but they also do all-day breakfasts, which is why we found ourselves here at around midday on a Saturday, tucked between families and admiring the artwork on the walls. La Ruca has a lovely, welcoming atmosphere, made all the more homely by the friendly owners. We both ordered the veggie breakfast, a tea and a coffee, and chilled out for half an hour.

On first impression, it’s a standard breakfast – the veggie sausages are good. not many mushrooms sadly (always my favourite part), some nice granary toast. It’s good to have two eggs on a breakfast as default, and the beans were nice and thick. For the breakfast alone, I’d probably award 5 sausages out of 10.

However, La Ruca’s atmosphere, surroundings and the various community-minded projects they had advertised (see below), definitely push its score up a bit for me. It’s nice to see a cafe that uses its space to get people together, not just to spend money.

On the way out, I was tempted by a couple of slices of cake, and they were also delicious – banana and blueberry for me, and a pecan slice for the girlfriend. The pecan slice disappeared so quickly I thought it might have been stolen by a hungry seagull – but no, it was wolfed by Herself after I took this slightly odd photo…

(Portrait Mode couldn’t quite handle the mesh of the table I guess).

Price for a veggie breakfast: £6.90

So all in all, I’d give La Ruca 7 cakes out of 10 for their breakfast!