GetStuffed FoodDrinkRestaurants
Up and away
Hip Old Town café Spoon has shifted a few hundred yards to larger new premises, providing more space, a bigger kitchen and longer hours. As Donald Reid discovers, it’s more of the same, but now in grander climes
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Glasgow
TINDERBOX Princes Square, Buchanan Street, City Centre, 0141 221 5557, £8 (lunch/dinner) The third city outlet of the trendy coffee shop has installed itself on the top floor of Princes Square, determined as ever to be cooler than Costa and suaver than Starbucks. The new unit comes with the trademark Graven Images design, a decent array of quite acceptable snack food, great coffee and terrace booths that might damage your chances of seeing and being seen. BUKHARAH Lorne Hotel, 923 Sauchiehall Street, West End, 0141 330 1550, www.bukharah.com, £8.95 (set lunch)/£18 (dinner) A mostly monochrome affair of black wooden furniture, brick walls and plush curtains – apart from the purple neon backdrop of adjoining cocktail bar Bilberry. Head chef Marukh Butt – the first Asian female head chef in Pakistan and Scotland – adheres to the latest trend of healthy, no-ghee Indian cooking with a collection of quirky East meets West dishes – a sizzling Punjabi paella being typical – alongside old favourites.
A perennial on our Eating & Drinking Guide Hitlist over the past seven years, Richard Alexander and Moira McFarlane’s Spoon Café has uprooted from Blackfriars Street to take over the former Nicholsons Restaurant opposite the Festival Theatre. The move to larger premises, a full kitchen and evening opening is no less a canvas than Alexander, the chef behind Dave Ramsden’s early successes at fitz(henry) and Rogue, deserves. The large, low ceilinged but intriguingly lit first-floor venue has been fitted out with an eclectic range of retro furniture and some chunky wooden bench tables, flexible enough for the venue to play a role as day-time café, pre-theatre diner and familiar evening bistro. The day-time menu has simple but full-flavoured dishes such as potted mackerel or pot-roasted chicken leg with puy lentils, along with the chunky, imaginative
10 THE LIST 3–17 Dec 2009
soups that offer an instant introduction to the understated culinary class at work. Spoon’s debut evening menu offers plenty more under the category of unpretentious but punchy modern British bistro food: pressed ox tongue with lamb’s lettuce, hake stew with borlotti beans, braised shoulder of pork with celeriac and apple bash, followed by a tartly creamy plum fool. + A cult classic in the making - Often forgets to act like a proper restaurant
SPOON CAFÉ BISTRO
6a Nicolson Street, Old Town, Edinburgh
0131 557 4567, spooncafe.co.uk Mon–Sat 10am–11pm; Sun noon–6pm.
SLUMDOG BAR & KITCHEN 410 Sauchiehall Street, City Centre, 0141 333 9933, slumdogbarandkitchen.com, £14 (lunch)/£17 (dinner) Tapping into the energetic zeitgeist of contemporary, cosmopolitan India, Charan Gill’s re-entry to the Glasgow scene doesn’t lack for ambition and populist touches. Seating over 150, its bare-brick walls, silk-backed chairs, antique carved doors and coloured pendant lights bring a smart if studied Bollywood glamour. The interesting Mumbai street food on the menu is joined by samosas, pakoras, kebabs and tandoori curries, not to mention that old fail-safe, fish and chips.
Ave. price two-course meal £8 (lunch)/£14 (dinner) CONTINUED ON PAGE 12