Arden Restaurant Guide

2021 Review: “A little jewel” – Masterchef competitor Julie Lin made her debut in Shawlands on the Southside in 2017 with this 16-seater serving fabulous and highly affordable Malaysian scoff. She also now has a pop-up at SWG3’s popular Acid Bar diner in Finnieston.

Occupying an interesting looking Edwardian landmark (built in 1914 as a tram stop), this “classic Italian” wins praise for its “well-cooked Italian food” (pizza, pasta, plus classic Italian staple dishes). “It can be crowded, but is very friendly”. It generated national headlines in 2023 (including in the fun-filled Sun), when owner Marco Giannasi ‘secretly’ sold the business to waiter Alex Matheson and his wife Jen Doherty (although Giannasi and his wife still own the freehold). Top Tip – “good value lunchtime offers”.

With the demise in recent years of its sibling venues, the ‘Two Fat Ladies’ branding is increasingly absent from Ryan James’s old-school fixture on the periphery of the city centre. Its traditional Franco-Scottish menu presents a focused range of options – typically venison, beef and fish dishes – with some spoiling puds (crumbles, possets, gateaux). For some reason, it has never generated huge amounts of feedback in our annual diners’ poll and there was too little for a rating this year. But this plush Victorian building is one of the city’s most historic eateries, and for a traditional blow-out it’s worthy of consideration.

It’s all change at this Finnieston fine-diner – a conversion of a long derelict tenement building that was launched in 2013 and has sat at “the top end of Glasgow’s gastronomic scene” ever since. In March 2024, coinciding with the departure of co-founder Ivan Stein, chef-owner Peter McKenna announced plans to re-brand the venture as a more accessible neighbourhood restaurant, becoming part of a growing wave of restaurants dropping their tasting menus. Besides à la carte and good-value set-lunch and early-evening menus, The Gannett Vn 2.0 has introduced a new ‘Sharing Sunday’ lunch, with a refurb also apparently on the cards. Given that the only odd gripes of yore were the prices and perhaps an excess of ambition, this can only be good news for the locals – more feedback on the new direction, please!

This compact den in Finnieston has an air of casual sophistication about it, with its counter at the front and dense warren of quirky eating areas. Owned by John Macleod, it’s earned a niche as one of the better-known venues in this popular neighbourhood, on the back of its superior seafood bites.

“A six-course themed taster menu, that changes every six weeks!” is the “playful idea” at Nico Simeone’s national chain, whose two London branches (in Fitzrovia and Canary Wharf) are “great for special occasions, but also affordable for a regular monthly meal out to experience the different cuisines”. At such keen prices, it’s unreasonable to expect perfection and most diners acknowledge this: it’s “a clever, and obviously very popular, concept, albeit one where the experience can seem a bit manufactured”; “although it doesn’t always live up to expectations, when you get the right menu everything clicks into place”; so while inevitably it’s “hit and miss, it’s also great value”, and “for a fun evening it does the job well”.

Surprisingly limited feedback this year on Monir & Smeena Mohammed’s cosily decorated West End venue founded in 1990, which nowadays has spin-offs elsewhere in town as well as in Edinburgh. Such information as we do have, though, suggests it maintains the high quality of Indian cuisine that’s helped build a small empire.

“Really wholesome and imaginative food with no fuss and frills” has won a solid reputation over the past 10 years for Jonathon MacDonald’s modern European small-plates specialist in Kelvingrove. It shut up shop for six months last autumn to allow for major renovation works while the team switched its attention to opening a new sister venue, Margo, in the city centre.

“The revival of Glasgow‘s hip West End continues apace” and “Unalome stands out for the excellence of its cooking and the refinement of its service”, according to all reports on Graeme Cheevers’s highly accomplished and accoladed three-year-old. “Tables are set apart so that conversations can be had without neighbours overhearing” and a fair proportion of reports say it provided the “gastronomic highlight of the year”, but one that’s “a joy and unpretentious despite the level of cooking”. The main event is a seven-course tasting menu for £135 per person. Top Menu Tip – “Scallops are exceptional as is the duck. And how they manage to source Gariguette strawberries from Midi-Pyrenees is a tribute to their eye for detail”.

Fresh pasta is made daily at this big (200 seats) operation in the Merchant City (from the team behind Paesano Pizza), which works on a no-bookings, first-come-first-served basis. Feedback is only limited, but says that as a “cheap ’n’ cheerful” option it’s “very impressive”. (The Scotsman’s Rosalind Erskine is a fan too, dubbing it – in her December 2023 review – “a winning formula that’s well executed”).

“Superb seafood” has made this central Glasgow institution one of the city’s most treasured dining destinations of the past two decades. Chef-patron Derek Marshall has reportedly put it up for sale after 26 years at the helm, but as we went to press there was no word on a possible buyer. Top Menu Tip – “the fish soup is to die for”.

2023 Review: Shuttered in September 2020 and marked as ‘Permanently Closed’ on Google, this city-centre fish and seafood institution is one of the city’s best-known restaurants thanks in large part to its Art Deco interior, created in 1935 by the same craftsmen who fitted out the Queen Mary. According to an August 2022 report in the Glasgow Evening Times, it will re-open… but no-one seems to know when.

What does it say about the culinary tastes of the British middle classes that this spin-off chain, with about 40 locations based on the original Theatreland icon, has been such a rip-roaring success? True, there’s some “great people-watching” at the “always buzzing” Chelsea Garden venue (which has one of SW3’s best gardens). And, without doubt, those branches in Kensington, Tower Bridge and Kingston also particularly stand out amongst the rest for their “super atmosphere”. In general though, the knock-off look of their locations “isn’t a patch on the original on West Street, yet pretends to be exactly the same”. And when it comes to their brasserie dishes: although its many followers tout them as “acceptable, albeit nothing special”, their rating-average identifies them as “underwhelming tick-box fare”; all offered by service that’s very “indifferent”. And yet they are “always busy”! In June 2024, it was announced that billionaire Richard Caring had successfully sold his entire Ivy restaurants stake. Now that he is laughing all the way to the bank, it will be interesting to see if ratings reverse, continue or deepen their southward trend.

Stop Press – in summer 2024, Paul Stevenson sold this hit pizzeria with a local sibling (plus equally popular pasta-only brand Sugo) to Glasgow-based DRG, whose empire includes Café Andaluz amongst many others, in what was reportedly an eight-figure deal. Fortunately, the new owners have announced that they have no plans to tinker with the winning formula, and for now it seems to be business as usual at this industrially styled venue, meaning that it continues to turn out “exceptional” Neapolitan-style pies from a “buzzy short menu” (almost wholly comprising a list of ten pizzas plus “amazing specials”).

“Continuing its outstanding reputation in the West End, Stravaigin has been given a recent facelift, which adds greatly to the ambience” – this thirty-year-old landmark of the West End was sold to new owners the Metropolitan Pub Company in 2022 and their investment is breathing new life into this Glaswegian foodie icon. Both The Scotsman and The Times reviewed it after the change and according to Rosalind Erskine of the former, “the food and drink… is a lot like the new look, it’s a refresh but still recognisable for what it always was, which will be a comfort to regulars and new visitors alike”.

A true “Glasgow institution” since 1971, when it was founded by the late Ronnie Clydesdale and later run by his son Colin, who sold up in 2022. Some fans “were worried that standards might drop following its sale” to pub group Greene King, but they feel “the reverse was the case: we had the best meal in years” – a view widely shared (“ownership has changed but the enjoyable experience has not”). The main dining room remains “a beautiful space”, “the service team are really helpful and friendly”, and there’s “still an amazing choice of malts” to cap off a meal of modern Scottish cuisine.