Champers on wheels reeled me in – at a price
Glasgow seafood restaurant is big on taste and also on cost
It’s the one with the champagne trolley According to my constantly pinging email inbox, new restaurants open all the time. But few are as instantly hot as Shucks in Glasgow’s Hyndland Road.
It’s part of the family that owns Epicures across the road and Michelin-starred Cail Bruich. It specialises in seafood, currently the biggest growth area in Glasgow restaurants. And, crucial to its ouchy high temperature, it has a champagne trolley.
First there were dessert trolleys. Cheese trolleys came next and I’ve also been offered bread from a magnificent cart of carbs. But whoever thought of filling the vehicle with ice and bottles of sparkling wine deserves a hefty bonus.
Or – more attractively – a percentage of sales.
The Accountant and I were weak in the face of its charms and had summoned a negroni sbagliato before the wheels stopped turning.
For those of you who don’t speak Italian cocktail, this is the slightly lighter, longer version of the classic negroni, made with Campari, red vermouth and prosecco in the place of gin.
It’s very jolly and delicious. At £12, so it should be.
So before a bite had crossed our lips, we got the message. Shucks is expensive and grown up, a casual but treaty restaurant for people who want premium seafood, proper champagne and a side of chips to keep it company.
The menu is not separated into anything as helpful as starters and main courses. Instead there are snacks (including a plate of fancy potatoes which cost almost a tenner). There is a raw, smoked and cured section, shellfish, fish fillets and grilled items that range from sausages to beetroots.
Sides include caviar beurre blanc, just in case the champagne trolley was not delivering enough fancy.
I find this type of arrangement confusing and annoying – and I’m used to restaurants. It encourages over-ordering and makes it all too easy to assemble an unbalanced meal.
On Saturday and Sunday, there is a £35 lunch deal that takes away this pain. There were two starters,
two mains and one dessert. Sold. The Accountant does not eat meat so had first dibs on the kingfish sashimi. What a joy. The kingfish is mostly eaten in Australia, which is our loss. The chef has found them from a Belgian fish farm and has them on the menu in several guises.
Here they were thinly cut into melty rags of saline sweetness, gently enhanced with fermented green tomato puree and coriander oil. Pumpkin seeds, roasted with soy sauce, brought the crunch. This was an exquisite dish – elegant, beautiful, bouncing with flavour.
My beef tartare was very good but lacked the novelty wow factor of the sashimi. The soft, yielding meat melted into the wasabi and oyster sauce dotted on the top. Three tiny nasturtium leaves made it look extra cute.
We changed down a gear for the next course. Griddled merguez sausages were very good but, on their ring of polenta, with caramelised onion mush in the middle, a much heartier dish than the elegant starters.
They made great eating and I enjoyed them but they didn’t quite match the refined starters. And, with just a couple of roast tomatoes, they were sadly lacking in vitamins or vegetables. Three miniscule leaves don’t dent my five a day. The whole meal was a green-free zone and cavolo nero or some other hardy kale would have been a happy addition to my plate.
The Accountant’s Peterhead coley was a similarly robust dish. It too was very good, a chunk of fine fat-flaked fish with blistered skin. The potatoes beneath had been crushed with some gently citrus element that we struggled to identify and softened into a lush creamy sauce thick with mussels and Arbroath smokies.
I looked enviously at her three spears of excellent asparagus.
Dessert arrived and, as if by magic, we were back in fourth gear. The Accountant is not a chocolate person and would not have chosen this from a menu but was instantly won over by a cloud-weight milk chocolate mousse, dark chocolate rubble and fat, jammy yet sharp blueberries on top.
There was salt in there too – we couldn’t identify exactly where, it just popped up in every third or fourth mouthful.
This was an extremely good lunch. But with the cocktails from the trolley and a 375ml carafe of rosé, it cost more than £100.
And on later close inspection of the options, I’m not convinced that it wouldn’t have been cheaper to swerve the set lunch and order similar dishes from the main menu.
I also don’t want to get scurvy and would appreciate a token nod to green things for my £35. Adding £6 for a plate of broccoli is not on.
I really liked Shucks, it’s smart and serious about food. A few tweaks and I will happily return to get trollied.