There are many things that I admire about Bistro Lotte but what I really love is that when I deliver more BIB wine or am in for lunch is that Lotty is pretty much always there. It’s a brave move putting your name above the door, but if you can imbue a space with your character and charm from morning until midnight then it is a very wise one indeed. They even have a crack pair of non-identical barista twins, what’s not to like?.
It is a room where you can immediately feel welcome and at home, there is nothing difficult or imposing or complicated. The building used to sell fireworks and spare parts for cars, a curious proposition indeed. Light floods in through the double front windows, affording a sense of space and time. It takes you to a more relaxing dimension perhaps with just the right hint of Gallic charm about the whole very sensitively reworked space which retains many original features.
Come for lunch and stay the night! Thankfully most things in my life are now in moderation, but the whole Townhouse has been restored with the option to take in the many charms of Frome and the surrounding area by staying in one of the well-appointed but unfussy rooms for a night or two. Heaven.
The food menu is in my mind just a list of things that I would like to eat. Moules, charcuterie, confit duck, bouillabaisse even but with more simple offerings of galettes, soup and tart du jour for lunch. There is real skill in the kitchen, the most difficult menus are those which are or appear to be the simplest. Everyone is catered for, with the steak frites always perfectly à point supplied by the v local (next door!) J Cayford butcher.
More Wine supplies the majority of the wine, an evolving list of 5 whites, 1 rose and 5 reds all poured by the glass or in carafes of various sizes. All very convivial for guests to consume; quick and easy for the team to pour. This is very much an authentic bistro wine list as over 30% of wine in France is sold in bag in box format. Perhaps counter-intuitively there is a lack of snobbishness and pretence about this format of wine in France and indeed most of the rest of Europe.
Unlike Keg wine which is very à la mode in London there are no expensive install costs for this format of wine. We have helped with the supply of our More Wine dispensing boxes to give a great aesthetic and simple blackboard to chalk up the wine. All wines are then simply dispensed by gravity.
In conversation with Lotty recently we mused on the number of bottles which have been prevented from having to be recycled. Prevention of the waste being formed is of course preferable to expensive collections and energy intensive recycling of the glass itself. So finally here we go……since opening the More Wine estimate of glass bottles prevented from the need for recycling by Bistro Lotte is at least 5000 or well over 2 tonnes of glass!!
More Wine has teamed up with Terracycle in 2018 to ensure that no part of our packaging need ever end up in landfill. Our cardboard outers are readily recycled by all councils. Our customers can now return the plastic inners of our bag in box wines to us so that these can be reworked into other plastics. We even offer an ‘Eco-credit’ of £1 per returned bag to help ensure our customers are rewarded for doing so.
