The restaurant years (1998 to mid 2000s)
The restaurant years: Los Andes, a Mexican restaurant and a club that never was
Long before The Milk Thistle, Quay Head House was a restaurant. The council’s planning files and an old Gazette notice have filled in a chapter nobody had written down.
We used to think Quay Head House went straight from offices to empty to squatted. The city council’s planning records, and one notice in The London Gazette, tell a different story.
1998: from offices to a restaurant
In June 1998 a restaurateur applied to change the use of the ground, first and second floors from offices to a restaurant, cafe and bar, with listed building consent for the alterations needed to serve food and drink. Both were granted that October, and the Evening Post announced that new cafe bar premises were on the way. An application for an illuminated projecting sign and board signs followed. The council allowed part of it, but refused listed building consent for the signs in June 1999, presumably to protect the front.
1999: Los Andes
The restaurant was Los Andes, a restaurant and cafe bar serving South American food. Its first company did not last: on 12 April 1999 its members met at Quay Head House itself and agreed that, because of its debts, it could not carry on, and a liquidator was appointed. But the restaurant kept trading. That July the Evening Post ran a reader offer for cut-price lunches and dinners there, praising its South American food.
2004: a Mexican restaurant, and a club that never was
By early 2004 the ground floor was a Mexican restaurant. In January an application was made, through a firm of solicitors, to change its use to a table dancing club. The council refused it in April 2004. It is one of the stranger might-have-beens in the building’s history.
2005: looking for tenants
After the restaurants, the first floor was used briefly as offices, captured in our photos from the mid 2000s. The building had no heating, so in 2005 permission was granted for air conditioning units at the back, on Leonard Lane, to make it more attractive to new tenants. An application for an illuminated display was made and then withdrawn. The building then stood empty for a while, until the squatters arrived.
What we still do not know
- What was the Mexican restaurant called, and when did it open and close?
- Did Los Andes serve Peruvian, Chilean or Argentinian food? When did it finally close? Does anyone have a menu?
- When did the Mexican restaurant close, and what happened to the rooms downstairs?
- What did the refused signs look like, and what did they say?
Did you eat here, work here, or walk past the signs? Tell us what you remember.
Sources: Bristol City Council Planning Online, applications 98/01759/F, 98/01768/LA, 98/01998/A, 98/02170/LA, 04/00318/F, 05/01735/LA, 05/01736/F and 05/03483/A; The London Gazette, Resolutions for Winding-up, Los Andes Limited, published 20 April 1999; British Newspaper Archive: Bristol Evening Post, 16 November 1998 and 28 July 1999; Western Daily Press, 29 April 1999