FOOD & DRINK NEWS & REVIEWS
BINARY DINERY
Kelvinside is no destination dining district but a neighbourhood restaurant with a new charitable direction adds up on various different fronts, as Jay Thundercliffe reports
N umber 111 Cleveden Road has gone through a number of guises under chef-proprietor Nico Simeone, who wasn’t long out of his teens when he first opened La Famiglia on the spot in 2011. As awards came Simeone’s way, that restaurant morphed into Simply Fish. Now, still under the same stewardship, the kitchen has become an academy to help youngsters with tough starts in life to gain the skills required to be a top chef. A case in point is Modou, the Senegalese head chef, who started as a kitchen porter with Simeone in 2014, impressed with his passion and commitment, and now is a visible talent in the confidently wide-open kitchen.
Signage might change and layout alter, but at the heart of Simeone’s various incarnations is cooking that is consistently among the best in the city – at prices that are surprising (set at 2 courses for £17, 3 for £20 or a tasting menu with wine for £30), if not bewildering. Suburban rents are clearly a mere snip of those more central since there is no chink in the quality of ingredients nor of evidently skilful floor and kitchen staff.
The compact menu describes dishes in terms so stark it borders on the brusque. ’Beetroot’ comes with ’walnut, gorgonzola, black olive’,
111 BY NICO
which rather belies the good-looking combination of earthy, mellow beetroots and warm nutty flavours, combining the bite of cheese and salty tang of olive paste. Likewise, ‘ox tongue’ doesn’t prepare you for some deep, rich nuggets, contrasting crisp exterior with creamy insides. Lamb requires a £4 supplement but the tender shoulder does come with heady truffle, as well as celeriac impressively done four ways. The sweet, floral notes of pomegranate and parsnip in the cod dish might be overpowering for some palates, but there’s no disputing seafood is still very well handled here. Side dishes might be needed to bolster a main (potatoes other than fries would be nice), which will notch the bill up a little, but not much.
Sweets don’t hit the same heights — a deconstructed pear cheesecake dish is let down by overly crunchy pear, showing up the limitations of the spoon as a cutting implement — but this does little to diminish one of Glasgow’s top dining experiences.
+ Attractive, enticing, exciting food at near- budget prices
- Deserves better than MOR music on the stereo
111 Cleveden Road, West End, Glasgow, G12 0JU, 0141 334 0111, 111bynico.co.uk
Ave. price two-course meal: £17 (set lunch / dinner) 66 THE LIST 5 Nov 2015–4 Feb 2016
DRINKS NEWS
At the end of October Glasgow got its second BrewDog venue with the opening of DogHouse at 99 Hutchison Street in the Merchant City. Combining bar, BBQ restaurant and bottle shop, it joins the company’s real estate along with a new BottleDog beer shop on Dundas Street in Edinburgh. Lebowski’s proprietors Kained Holdings have named their new bar and restaurant So, What Comes Next? It’s located in the former Crosslands bar (the Begbie fight bar in Trainspotting) at 182 Queen Margaret Drive. The same group have also established a presence on the Southside with a Lebowski’s Pop-up at Sammy Dow’s (see page 70, recent openings).
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