Go and have fun at trendy city bar that’s streets ahead of the rest
There was once a time when people looking to move to the southside of Glasgow consoled themselves with the idea that it was “the new west end”.
Talk about an inferiority complex. For folk who’d spent their lives in areas like Mount Florida, Shawlands, Langside and Govanhill, there was a rightly-arched eyebrow at the notion that their humble ’ hoods should be measured in comparison to life in the supposedly more desirable streets of leafy bohemia, where rents are extortionate, mortgages impossible and students don’t take their turn washing the close.
You can see why everybody wants to live there, right?
Cut to 2020 and anybody using the comparison gets laughed at. While Glasgow’s Finnieston has taken on the mantle of the city’s top weekend destination with its own “strip” of bars and restaurants, there’s another strip on the flip side of the river which has become a destination rather than just the boozer round the corner for the locals.
Chief among them is The Bungo, which opened in 2011 and helped seed the pub scene evolution in the wee square of pretty streets between Govanhill, Pollokshields and Shawlands.
Like one of many in the area, it was a working man’s pub before an overhaul saw it torn out and stripped back to the original tenement sandstone blocks. A bar, restaurant and even, downstairs, sometimes a club, the Bungo is a multifaceted option in this neck of the woods. It manages to be both contemporary and rustic, bar and restaurant, dress up and dress down.
From the owners of
Left Bank in Kelvingrove,
The Bungo feels at its best as a Friday night bar, although Pub Spy has swung by on the odd afternoon for a chargrilled chicken salad (with chips, naturally), a seat in the window and a beer with a buddy (Williams Brothers is a popular choice).
There’s normally a dog to clap too and, if you’re lucky, it might even be Rory, the border collie whose adventures on the southside of Glasgow were chronicled by his owner in a self-published comic book.
When The Bungo opened, visitors were encouraged to stick a tiny pin in a giant map of the surrounding streets. It’s a nice touch, ramping up the feel that these places care about your neighbourhood.
But it became impractical as word spread around the city and folk came from streets well beyond the map’s boundaries. Even Glasgow’s west end. Or, as they might well call it here, southside west…