The Guardian
Grace Dent found “comfort food with the chef’s foot fully on the gas” at this modest-seeming wine bar – the younger sibling of feted Cal Bruich nearby – which “holds a fig leaf over its fanciness” but is “very possibly Glasgow’s best restaurant right now”.
“I’ve seen bigger places than this struggle to send out a club sandwich, yet here they make some of the most complex and intriguing starters I’ve eaten all year. A generous bowl of Orkney scallops, fried until golden and served in a macadamia nut cream, come in a scallop consommé with finger lime and coastal greens.”
Chef-director Colin Anderson, formerly of Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in London, is responsible for “sensational” specials such as prime chateaubriand, with a side of jersey royals drenched in a wild garlic and chicken butter emulsion or monkfish tail poached in butter with confit fennel, bergamot gel and brown butter sauce. “The service is great – warm, relaxed, proud of how delicious the food is, and always there, while also not being there at all.”
Grace Dent - 2024-05-26The Times
Chitra Ramaswamy was thrilled by “the hottest culinary show in town” – dinner at the counter of Cail Bruich’s “younger, brasher sister”, where Colin Anderson and his team are cooking “some of the most big-flavoured, big-hearted, big-ideated food in the land”.
She kicked off with their legendary giant gildas – chicken fat-drenched sourdough, gordal olive and buttery smoked Cantabrian anchovy: “Let the explosions on the tongue commence. If only every meal could begin this way.”
The meal that followed was every bit as good, including a dish “so fiercely adored Anderson has never been able to take it off the menu”: mushroom XO linguini, “a close study in umami” featuring mixed fresh and fermented mushrooms and an intensely flavoured parmesan foam. White asparagus was cooked to order and served with morels stuffed with fermented mushroom trimmings; monkfish tail was first aged for a week and brined, then barbecued and served in a brown butter velouté amped up with fish trimmings; intensely flavoured Yorkshire rhubarb arrived tender and dazzlingly pink.
Chitra Ramaswamy - 2026-04-19
