Best Eats of Glasgow

Back in July, Rob and I managed to get a couple of days away together. Keen on exploring a cultural and foodie centre, we opted for Glasgow. With such limited time and so many culinary hot spots to explore, we were ruthless in picking restaurants. Below are the few that made the cut.

The Dhabba 

In North India, roadside diners are commonly known as Dhabbas - This indian restaurant in Glasgow replicates that cuisine with finese and true expertise! Recommended by The Guardian as one of the Top 10 Curry Houses in the UK. 

We ate Shuruvaati Thal - a starter platter of king prawn, lamb, chicken and vegetarian bites. Followed by Masala Machli - Juicy monkfish in a sauce of caramelised onions, tomatoes and peppers, Bhuna Gosht with lamb that was 'melt in the mouth' tender, and we garnished our curries with garlic naans the size of my head - an incredible depth of flavour, and a lovely smokey finish.

Cafe Gandolfi

Once part of an old cheese market, this rustic cafe is the perfect spot for a Scottish breakfast.

Deagh Bhiadh, Deagh Bheannachd - Well fed, well blessed. The Gaelic proverb displayed on the wall of the Cafe Gandolfi is the owner's aspiration for everybody who eats there. We started our day with Freshly Squeezed Pink Grapefruit Juice, cheek pursing sharpness and sweetness balanced perfectly. Rob took on the Full Scottish Breakfast - Stornoway black pudding, bacon, beef sausage, cherry tomatoes, potato scone, field mushrooms and scrambled eggs... and toast of course! Whilst I opted for the slightly more modest Eggs Hebridean with Stornoway black pudding. By far the best black pudding I have ever had accompanied by silk eggs and a rich hollandaise, it was enough for a post breakfast nap. 

Bread Meats Bread

We happened to be staying around the corner from Bread Meats Bread and saw it by chance. It peaked our interested immediately - clever restaurant name, good styling, burgers?! So we gave it a try. As you know we're both big fans of American style food, so we hoped it would fill the beef shaped hole in our lives. We ate a Fullhouse Burger - Brioche Bun, American Cheese, Smoked Brisket, Gravy, Tobacco Onions, Pickles and Sauce, as well as the Chicago Goumet Dog with mustard, tomatoes, onion and pickle relish. We then shared a Classic Poutine. If you have never tried the Canadian masterpiece that is Poutine - you are wasting your life, go out and get some NOW. The classic poutine is Chips with Cheese Curds and Gravy. It's not chips, cheese and gravy. It's different, honest. You'll fall in love or your money back (Georgie guarentee*) *No money will be refunded.

Riverhill Cafe

For our last morning in Glasgow, we searched for a great cup of coffee. It had been two days and I needed caffiene - I'm a Londoner! Riverhill ticked all of the boxes. I was finally granted a delicious flat white - smooth, rich and creamy. Rob opted for a Black Pudding Sausage roll, which was beautifully rustic and had a great texture and flavour. Continuing my Canadian theme - we were in Glasgow after all... I tried a Nanaimo Bar. This particular nanaimo was vegan and extremely filling. A traditional nanaimo has a wafer-like base with a custard layer and chocolate topping, but this was a healthy coconut version, made with dates and cocao instead of chocolate. Guilt free cakes at their best!

Blanchette Soho

Imagine you're sat in a beautiful little bistro in Paris and you're about to embark on tasting a variety of French delights. Now imagine that a group of Shoreditch hipsters are running said bistro. What do you have? Blanchette. 

I don't say this is a negative sense by any means. Blanchette's visual quirks and rustic feel are all part of its charm. From the mismatched crockery to the Gerard Depadieu cookbook, it's exactly the kind of place where you could cosy up into a corner with an old friend on a Friday night, consuming a lot of cheese and wine before merrily stumbling towards the last tube. 

 

As for our visit, we smugly passed the long queue for The Breakfast Club (every weekend guys, surely you can cook your own pancakes?) and were greeted with a relievingly cool and stylish, yet moderately empty restaurant. We were seated at a 'widescreen' (as my partner so appropriately put it) table, where our knees could touch but there was still plenty of room for food. Unfortunately I must prologue this visit by saying that I had a stonking cold, however I was determined to enjoy the first outing Rob and I had managed to organise in a while. This did mean that I decided not to drink any alcohol. It was astonishingly painful to look at the wine and cocktail menu knowing this. I could only imagine the taste of their classic Grey Goose and Tanquery Martini or Loire Valley Savignon Blanc on my tongue.

Blanchette's classic and simple dishes work in a similar way to tapas, and they recommend 3 dishes per person.

We started with Fresh Bread and Butter. The butter was perfect at room temperature (Sorry, Chris) and absolutely delectable smeared onto the warm bread. Although served in a slightly odd paper bag, Rob states it was one of the highlights of the meal.

In true French style, we ordered the Crispy Frogs Legs with Bois Boudran Sauce.

Crispy Frogs Legs

The breadcrumb coating was flavourful and the meat was juicy and tender, and the sauce was the perfect accompaniment to cut through the richness. 

Unable to resist Chacuterie at any time of day, we ordered the Coppa, an Italian cured ham (usually made from pork neck or shoulder). A generous plate, the meat was delicate yet packed with flavour and a smoky finish.

Coppa

For our hot dishes we ordered Braised Lamb Shoulder with Anchovy, Rosemary and Soubise Sauce / Grilled Beef Rump with Nicoise Relish, Grelot Onion and Rouille / Smoked Duck Breast Salad with Heritage Tomato Vierge and Baby Artichoke. Before you ask where the vegetables are, Rob didn't want any of the vegetables and he was paying. So it was a meat fest.

Smoked Duck Breast Salad

Braised Lamb Shoulder

Grilled Beef Rump

Of the three dishes, the lamb is the stand out champion. With orgasmicly tender and melting meat, sweet roasted garlic and a sauce I would bathe in, this is simplicity at it's best. The duck salad was fresh, sweet and the mixture of textures were incredibly pleasing. Finally, the beef rump was the work of a chef who knows exactly how create a dish from lots of little ingredients whilst still letting the delicate and thin beef sing as the star.

By this point I was pleasantly full. But we opted for dessert anyway. As each dish had been fantastic in it's own right, it would be a crime not to. We ordered the Chocolate Marquise with Salted Caramel Puffed Rice and Pistachio Ice Cream and Tart Lemon Pot with Strawberry, Gin and Parlsey Sorbet. 

The lemon pot was creamy and moreish with a beautifully refreshing 'summer on Hampstead Heath' sorbet that contained just the right amount of gin and the parsley was a great palate cleanser. The accompanying twilles were delicate and generously sugared. The marquis was a wholly different beast, rich and indulgent with the ice cream giving a pop of colour to the dish and texture from the puffed rice.

With dishes between £6 and £8, it's impossible not to feel spoilt in Blanchette. 

We were kids in a magasin de bonbons. 

Yorkshire Special: Salts Diner

I am currently having a mini holiday in Yorkshire, visiting my Mum and Stepdad and enjoying the fresh air of the Dales. So I wanted to give you a bit of a 'Yorkshire Special Edition' this weekend, starting with this post and a couple more to follow...

After picking me up from Leeds station at the crack of dawn yesterday, we travelled to Saltaire - a beautiful World Heritage village in West Yorkshire, somewhere that they've been looking at relocating to. Saltaire is a Victorian Industrial village that was founded by Sir Titus Salt, who began a huge textile mill in the area. He then gradually built up a village for his employees, providing them with schools, churches and accommodation. 

We visited Salts Mill, which is now a tourism site surrounding the history of Titus Salt and his legacy. They also have fantastic book shops, cook shops, housewares and an antique/vintage store. It was fab! We ate lunch at Salts Diner, which has a huge David Hockney connection (David Hockney lived in Bradford and Salts Mill holds a very large collection of his work). 

Salts Diner had some of the nicest restaurant design I'd seen in a while. Their logo is an illustration by David Hockney of one of his beloved Dachshunds and their menu was really innovative and interesting a beautiful. We didn't each a huge meal here, just having a light lunch. But I did further enhance my Arizona Green Tea with Honey addiction (in the US you can get a huge half litre can for about 60p). 

My mum and I shared one of the Pizza Specials, which was Butternut Squash, Goats Cheese, Beetroot Relish and Caramelised Onions and we had this was a seasonal salad. The pizza dough was delicious, really nicely flavoured and the toppings were perfectly balanced. There was a very subtle sweetness from the butternut squash and caramelised onions and these were matched beautifully with acidic goats cheese and earthy beetroot. One of the best pizza combinations I've tried for a while. The seasonal salad was more than just a handful of standard leaves, which I really appreciated. There were pickles, olives, radishes, peppers and the dressing was lovely. It definitely held it's own. 

So Salt's Diner was a winner! Tonight we're off to Shear's Yard in Central Leeds, which I am extremely excited about. I'm going to do some sort of stomach enhancing yoga stretches now to prepare.