FOOD & DRINK RECENT OPENINGS
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NO PLACE LIKE HOME The relationship of Italian restaurants to the real food of Italy is often remote. Donald Reid finds an Edinburgh-based chef determined to recloate Italian food back in the direction of home
T he name hasn’t changed. Neither has the aim. The location of the Locanda de Gusti has, however, shifted across town from the foot of Broughton Street to Dalry Road, right next door to the spot where owner-chef Rosario Sartore first made his name a decade ago at La Partenope. The scale is smaller, more manageable, and the return to roots is emphasised by a homely design of aquamarine hues evoking the Bay of Naples. Even down to the folksy ornaments and faux stonework on the walls, this is less a typical Italian restaurant as a place you’d typically encounter in Italy. The roots of Sartore’s affinity with good food are deep in his Neapolitan home, and he’s loath to stray anywhere further. In the kitchen himself most of the time, he makes his own pappardelle and ravioli, stocks and slow-cooked meats, serves pizza no more flamboyant than margherita, and is at his most animated talking about dishes of tripe in tomato passata or pork belly with beans. Seafood is an emphasis, and decent-quality gluten free pasta and pizzas have become a bit of a speciality, emerging from a kitchen where the chef is cooking the uncomplicated, tasty food he wants to cook – and in this case that’s worth travelling across town to find.
LOCANDA DE GUSTI
102 Dalry Road, Edinburgh, 0131 558 9581, locandadegusti.com Average price two-course meal: £16
The best of the new restaurant, café and bar openings in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Prices shown are for an average two-course meal for one.
Glasgow
ALSTON BAR AND BEEF STEAKHOUSE AND GIN BAR
Peckham’s old shop is spread across bright ground floor and mezzanine with aproned staff whisking about. Much of the early popularity is down to the top quality and locally sourced ingredients that go into decently priced breakfasts, lunches and bistro offerings of coq au vin, steak frites, chargrilled burger and the like. Williams Bros on draught, Bloody Marys and small-batch, single-origin coffee roastings are notable beverages.
Central Station, 79 Gordon Street, City Centre, 0141 221 7627, alstonglasgow.co.uk, £12 (set lunch) / £28 (dinner)
NY AMERICAN GRILL NORTH AMERICAN
Bucking the usual avoid- at-all-costs nature of train station eating, this beef and gin specialist is one of the hot dining tickets in town. The doorway at the station’s main entrance is possibly the most transformative in town, propelling diners from the bustle of commuters into a dazzlingly lit stairwell leading down to a great- looking venue occupying double arches. Named after the nearby street that was cleared away for the station in the 1870s, Alston is a slick operation, with expertly mixed cocktails from a mouthwatering gin selection (14 from Scotland alone) and excellent Borders-reared beef in various cuts, grass fed and dry-aged for 35 days, producing exceptional flavour in a perfectly cooked sirloin.
Princes Square, City Centre, 0141 221 7667, nyamericangrill.co.uk, £11.95 (set lunch) / £20 (dinner) Another operation from the owners of neighbouring café Cranachan and tapas bar Barca, this top-floor diner does US food and drink in a comfortably stylish setting where the Americana is concentrated in the menu more than on the walls. From the impressive US cocktail offerings, great selection of bourbons and craft beers, and classic transatlantic food from deli sandwiches to burgers and dogs, it’s an intriguing newcomer offering decent dining, though food may occasionally feel by the numbers – and it’s hard to discern the benefits of its much-lauded Josper grill, especially on the less-than-juicy burgers.
Edinburgh
C-SHACK SEAFOOD BISTRO
THE HYNDLAND FOX CAFE & BISTRO
43 Clarence Drive, West End, G12 9QN, 0141 341 6633, thehyndlandfox.co.uk, £15 (lunch/dinner) A union between Peckham’s and restaurant group G1 may seem like one made far from heaven, but the granddaddy of Glasgow delis and the style-obsessed operator have enlivened a well-heeled corner of Hyndland. This enjoyable café-bistro on the site of
3 Pier Place, Newhaven, 0131 467 862, cshack.co.uk, £20 (dinner) Twelve months ago, snug wee Thai diner Port of Siam expanded into town by opening a branch off Broughton Street. Now the original has reinvented itself under the same ownership as a jaunty seafood shack with creels in the window display and gleaming white and blue paintwork. It summarises its offer as ‘Seafood, Burgers, Bieres’ and it’s the first that’s most convincing, with a
strong line-up of simple, fresh dishes including ceviche, seafood tempura and crab and lobster options sourced from the remaining commercial creeler working out of the charming stone harbour right across the road.
MILLER & CARTER STEAKHOUSE
Cramond Brig, Cramond, 0131 339 4350, millerandcarter.co.uk, £10.50 (lunch) / £23 (dinner) The latest incarnation of the Cramond Brig pub on the northwest fringes of Edinburgh is as the most northerly outpost of the Miller & Carter empire, the steakhouse chain treating the 18th-century coach house to a six- figure facelift in early 2014. The hustle and bustle of the restaurant at the front, with a two-level bar at its heart, is in contrast with the more secluded rear. A rack of ribs, smothered in a glossy BBQ sauce, is a sizeable challenge for even the most ardent of appetites, and there are plenty more crowd-pleasers elsewhere on the menu to placate all generations.
HEADS & TALES GIN BAR AND DISTILLERY
1a Rutland Place, West End, 0131 229 3402, headsandtalesbar.com
Having launched Edinburgh Gin in 2010, Alex and Jane Nicol of Spencerfield Spirit have brought it home in the creation of a bespoke micro distillery in a gin bar and gin visitors centre in the heart of Scotland’s capital. It’s located in the suitably subterranean Heads & Tales bar beneath the Rutland Hotel, where you can see the gin in production, use mini-stills to create your own spirits, or simply enjoy the final product (and many other gins and spirits too) at the bar run by Bruce Hamilton, which also serves cheese, charcuterie and fish boards.
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 52 THE LIST 10 Jul–21 Aug 2014