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The best of the new restaurant, café and bar openings in Glasgow and Edinburgh
Glasgow BROOKLYN BAR & GRILL NORTH AMERICAN 33 Ingram Street, Merchant City, G1 1HA, 0141 552 5736, £16 (lunch / dinner) Proper good ol’ US of A food is rare in Glasgow – so new restaurant Brooklyn Bar & Grill grabs attention for attempting an oft-overlooked cuisine. It doesn’t overdo the Americana in its pleasant former fire station venue: the odd picture here, pinball machine there. The menu concentrates on the American classics, with the likes of corn dogs, chowder, NY strip steaks, pastrami on rye, campfire beans, and hickory ribs. Brooklyn needs a stunning burger, yet it is rather disappointing – the patty is tasty enough but dry and dense, dwarfed by a fragile bun that penalises manhandling. Much better is the jambalaya, with rice infused with deep chorizo flavours. Portions are generous and prices relatively reasonable.
PESTO ITALIAN
57–61 St Vincent St, City Centre, G2 5SH, 0141 204 0979, pestorestaurants.co.uk, £7.95 (set lunch ) / £12.50 (dinner) This family-owned restaurant, with Manchester and Liverpool branches, positioned itself in tricky prime Italian territory, a stone’s throw from half a dozen competitors such as Jamie’s, Carluccio’s or local players Paperino’s and Fratelli Sarti. The rather alluring glass-covered frontage with its vivid green softens to relaxed earthy hues and dark wood inside the huge space covering three floors. There’s plenty to enjoy in a menu offering around 40 piattini or tapas, from heady doorstep garlic bread and overpoweringly rich arancini of deep-fried saffron rice balls with mozzarella to addictive garlic and oregano potatoes and nicely spiced meatballs.
EAT CAFÉ / SANDWICH BAR
31–33 Gordon Street, G1 4RZ and 12 Sauchiehall Street, G2 3GF, City Centre, eat.co.uk, £8 (lunch) Londoncentric sandwich chain Eat has expanded from the airport to two prominent sites in the city centre, one near Buchanan Galleries and one taking over Miss Cranston’s Tearooms, which 30 THE LIST 2 Feb–1 Mar 2012
interior the plate glass wall facing the street invariably makes this an interesting spot to dine.
HOTEL CHOCOLAT CHOCOLATE SHOP AND CAFE 7a Frederick Street, New Town, EH2 2EY, 0131 226 7537, hotelchocolat.co.uk Fast-moving chocolatier and aspirant high street brand, Hotel Chocolat has nearly 100 shops, boutiques and in-store concessions around the UK, as well as its own cacao plantation, hotel and restaurant on Saint Lucia. They’ve made it north of the border with a small shop just off Princes Street that carries a wide range of chocolately treats, gifts and indulgences. Squeezed in at the rear is a small, simple café serving coffees, loose leaf tea, velvety-smooth hot chocolate and a new variation, lattes made with cacao beans roasted in the same way as coffee beans. It’s really a sampling spot rather than a fully-fledged café, with just chocolate cake served in a paper cup if you’re after food.
CAFÉ PORTRAIT ARTS VENUE CAFE Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1 Queen Street, New Town, EH2 1JD, nationalgalleries.org, £9 (lunch) When the Portrait Gallery closed for refurbishment a couple of years ago, there was as much consternation about the future of the much-loved, tucked- away café as there was for the collection itself. Now reopened, there’s much to commend in all aspects of the new gallery, including the café, even if it will be harder to love. Relocated to the right of the entrance, significantly larger and certainly slicker, it shows off all Heritage Portfolio’s grasp of what’s expected of a contemporary cultured café. The servery is unobtrustive and efficient, the staff numerous, and the food restrained in choice but attractive with piles of fresh ciabatta rolls, lively daily specials such as sweet potato curry, creative salads and generously portioned tray bakes.
Independent write-ups on all the restaurants worth knowing about in Glasgow and Edinburgh are available on our online Eating & Drinking Guide at list.co.uk/food-and-drink Prices shown are for an average two-course meal for one.
Bungo-a-go-go Southside suburb Strathbungo now has a place to call its very own, as Andrea Pearson discovers
D espite having been open for just a few weeks, The Bungo Bar and Kitchen – the third outlet in the Left Bank and Two Figs chain run by Jacqueline Fennessy and Catherine Hardy – is already jumping. Midweek, cheerful regulars can be found enjoying a Staropramen or a Rioja in the smartly kitted-out bar, while diners chat away in the warm sandstone-lined dining room at the back. The secret of its early success may be in the name. Bungo – the nickname for the surrounding neighbourhood – feels like a village within a city and has long held its own local festivals. By bagsying the Bungo moniker the place has endeared itself immediately to the locals – something reinforced by a large street map painting on the wall on which visitors have marked out their cribs with pins. The owners have also drilled deep into the Scottish psyche to create the menu, serving up the ultimate comfort food of burgers, curries and creamy puds. Some of the details are great – such as tender mussels served in a rasam style sauce and a coconut syllabub with pineapple. While the food on offer won’t change the world, the place is certainly brightening up the Bungo.
THE BUNGO BAR & KITCHEN
17–21 Nithsdale Road, Southside, Glasgow G41 2AL
0141 423 0023, thebungo.co.uk Ave. price two-course meal: £7.25 (lunch) / £16 (dinner)
smugly overlooks its nearest rival Pret A Manger and makes for a pleasant central café in subdued browns and creams. Eat is a fairly standard modern sandwich place, mixing interesting filling options with the commonplace in its wall of chiller cabinets for the hoi polloi to grab and go. There are fresh soups, with a slab of MDF-like seeded bread, but it’s really the pies – including beef and stilton served with an OK mash and gravy – that help set Eat apart from many similar rivals.
Edinburgh NAWROZ MIDDLE EASTERN/KURDISH 26–30 Potterrow, Southside, EH8
9BT, 0131 667 2299, nawrozrestaurant.com,£7.50 (lunch) / £16 (dinner) This prominent site beside the University has seen some diverse tenants in recent years, ranging from Khushi’s curries to Japanese teppanyaki. It’s now one of a number of local places offering Middle Eastern and, in particular, Kurdish cooking, though early signs are that there’s an enthusiasm and commitment from the owners that may deliver food well above the run-of-the-mill. It’s not just hummus, shawarma and kebabs on the menu, with dishes such as salatay bayngan (aubergine salad) and fasolya ba gosht (lamb and white beans in tomato sauce) being served with fresh Kurdish nan bazary. Despite the plain