The Observer
Guest critic Chitra Ramaswamy wondered whether this “achingly cool Italian-inspired” restaurant from Anna and Dean Parker had survived its transfer from Glasgow’s most haunted hotel, the baronial Cathedral House, to the art deco Arthouse in the city centre. “It’s all gone a bit posh,” she judged – but a “fabulous” Sunday lunch confirmed that all was well.
“Many preoccupations of Dean, the head chef, are here: ferments, smoking, preservation, a zero-waste ethos and a love of fried stuff,” Chitra reported. His cooking is “idiosyncratic and sophisticated”, but with “an Italian reverence for simplicity”, and his house-made pasta is “God-tier-good”.
A dish of linguine pushes the “inspired” in Italian-inspired to the limit, with meaty cod cheeks flavoured with a berber chilli blend and what tastes like preserved lemon: “a pasta with one foot in the boot of Italy and the other striding out across the Med to Africa and the Levant”. A main of monkfish comes with Celentano’s “iconic strati: gold ingots, thinly stacked in striated layers, and licked with beef fat and as naughty as a Glasgow potato gets.”
Chitra Ramaswamy - 2026-09-01
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