GetStuffed FoodDrinkRestaurants
Giving a Fig, or two The team behind The Left Bank have just opened up their second venue. Donald Reid’s puns went into overdrive
F or Catherine Hardy and Jacqueline Fennessy, once the wallpaper’s right, the rest will follow.
The Timorous Beasties design on the walls of the Left Bank, their original bar-diner on Gibson Street, defined the artful touch that helped make the place an instant hit when it opened in 2006. Even back then, Hardy and Fennessy knew that they wanted to open another venture, but they didn’t know where it would be or what it would be called. So they began to look at wallpaper designs. The discovery of Devon designer Sam Pickard’s line of fig leaf motif papers ‘set off a chain of events,’ according to Fennessey. It ended with new venture Two Figs at the foot of Byres Road, in the place recently and briefly occupied by Cabbages & Kings.
The venue is an awkward U-shape, which Hardy and Fennessey have addressed by putting the bar on one side (Fig 1, in staff shorthand) and making the other (Fig 2) a dining area. The latter is decked out in the ripe fig’s mature purple colours, the former a younger, fresher fig green. The food links in the name and imagery are no mistake. While Hardy describes the new place as ‘more bar-y’ than the Left Bank, the menu is still light and sophisticated. It features standards such as chicken wings and a haddock supper, alongside wok-fried crab claws in a curry leaf sauce or a dynamic seven seed salad. There are bar snacks, Addlestone’s Cider and beers like WEST’s St Mungo’s on draft. Irishman Peter Callin is lead chef, working under Liz McGougan, long-standing head chef at the Left Bank.
The energy and enthusiasm the team have for their new project shows that just recreating another Left Bank would have limited them – though plans to open a Left Bank bar and restaurant in the Merchant City next year are already in place. That so many elements of Two Figs reflect the Left Bank – not just the importance of wallpaper, but the the raw elements of concrete, wood and brick, as well
‘WE WANT TO INCORPORATE ART INTO THE DESIGN, NOT STICK IT ON THE WALL’ as the engagement with top designers and local tradesmen – is an indication of how much they got right first time around. As Fennessy says, ‘In both places, it has been about trying to incorporate art into the design, not just sticking it on the walls.’
The danger, of course, is getting a bit carried away with the fig theme. There’s a lot of the fruit around, from real ones on the menu to a wrought iron fig vine by Scott Associates (the people behind the Heavy Horse on the M8) crawling up a bare brick wall. But for those who don’t really give a fig for such things the important element is the arrival of a bar with style and substance at the heart of the West End scene. Go fig-ure. Two Figs, 5 & 9 Byres Road, Glasgow, 0141 334 7277, www.thetwofigs.co.uk
TAKE THREE: FRUITILY-NAMED RESTAURANTS
L’Artichaut 14 Eyre Place, Edinburgh, 0131 558 1608 Jean Michel Gauffre of La Garrigue has taken over the former Duck’s at Le Marche Noir in the New Town and plans to open this fine dining vegetarian restaurant in late August. He promises a ‘French twist’ to the dishes, with prices set at around £16-17 for two courses.
Cherry & Heather Fine Food 7 North Gower Street, Glasgow, 0141 427 0272, cherryandheather.co.uk Iwan and Reiko Sasaki’s delightful little takeaway/café in Ibrox. The wholesome whimsy of the name extends to the menu, which alliteratively encompasses stew, sandwiches, (home-made) soups and sushi in imaginative combinations of fresh, high-quality ingredients. Rhubarb Prestonfield House, Priestfield Road, Edinburgh, 0131 225 1333, rhubarb-restaurant.com The terrible swanky restaurant in the five-star hotel run by James Thomson of Witchery fame takes its name from the fact that Sir Alexander Dick of Prestonfield was the first person to introduce rhubarb to Britain in the 18th century. Just in case you were wondering.
6 THE LIST 20–27 Aug 2009