Never mind that Michelin snub... Ron Mackenna’s top 12 Scottish restaurants

THERE’S been much gnashing of teeth about Scotland’s already-small stack of Michelin-starred restaurants being slashed by three this year – with not a single new one to take up the slack. We only have a paltry eight – compared with 16 in Ireland – and of course poor old Glasgow still doesn’t have a single star to its name.

If you ask me, that’s nothing to do with Glaswegians not being prepared to pay Michelin prices – there are clearly many restaurants in the city where you can easily spend Michelin money on a meal without a gong. In fact, fixed price lunches at Michelin restaurants are usually a stealth bargain, and with their penchant for fixed price dinners at least you know how much you are paying.

Do the stars matter anyway? Maybe. The truth is the three that disappeared did so for a variety of reasons, including a fire and a restaurant that simply didn’t want to be Michelin-starred anymore. However, Michelin is still a genuinely and fiercely independent awards process which stands for very high standards on the plate. But there are plenty of decent and quirky restaurants in Scotland that can deal very comfortably with any night out or languid lunch. Here are my favourites.

OAKA SUPERCITY 130 GEORGE STREET GLASGOW 0141 552 0688

Not for the pompous, the pretentious or even those who consider themselves foodies (whatever that is) but this stealth superstar of the student food world has become a monster underground hit with its fast and casual eat-while-you-perch Hong Kong curry fish balls, gyozos, miso and ha kaos at prices that are joyously, almost incredibly low, in settings that are one part Chinese supermarket, two parts Japanese manga bar and three parts Korean kimchi cute, all fired out in bowls that are paper, served from tureens that are stainless steel and with tasty little custard cakes to follow.

LOCH BAY RESTAURANT STEIN

At the bottom of a hill, at the side of a loch, at the very end of the culinary Earth. If there’s a more magically situated restaurant in Scotland – actually make that on Planet Food – I haven’t seen it. Hollywood doesn’t do Michelin-starred restaurants but if they did, this chilled-out, off-piste, husband and wife-run but and ben sets every Scotch mist atmospheric bell a-ringing except – and unlike in the movies – the closer you look, the better it gets. Food fabulous, whipped still flapping straight from the waters and prepared with the kind of technical skill that will make you wonder if you have ever really tasted a prawn before.

ONDINE

A perennial wallflower in the culinary prizegiving of life. Not the best, the boldest, the loudest or even the smuggest restaurant in Edinburgh, and goodness knows the capital has a few of those, but Ondine is always open, super-user-friendly, handles seafood lightly and deftly, treats customers quickly – during the day anyway – and is always my absolute first choice for that last-minute in-and-out-in-an-hour top-quality capital lunch.

THE SUGAR BOAT

Blisteringly good and super-stylish cooking in what looks like a cafe off a square in downtown Helensburgh. Here the ladies still wear hats and you can have coffee and biscuits instead of white onion soup with onion bhaji, or cassoulet with fat juicy sausages. But why on earth would you? Two years ago I said this was Michelin-worthy food – irrespective of the setting. The inspectors obviously agree – last week giving this place the Bib Gourmand it so rightly deserves and instantly making it probably the best Bib Gourmand in Scotland.

THE WALNUT

If home cooking wasn’t the most traduced phrase in the English language it would sum up almost perfectly what’s going on in this little shopfront restaurant hunkering down amid the plump egos and pert