New vegan deli Ground-breaking eatery with big, bold dishes to tantalise taste buds

ZILCH BAKERY AND DELI

GLASGOW

NOT last time but the time before? Pre-lockdown, anyway, I was in getting my hair cut at John the barber’s (No 4 top, No 3 sides is the way I roll) and he mentioned that for the first time in, oh, say, 15 years every single shop unit on this little stretch of Norfolk Street was occupied.

The newest place being a, wait for this, vegan joint. Called Zilch. In the Gorbals. Sign gone up, work being done, just about to open. Then came the pandemic. So here I am. Months later.

Taking a seat. Having filled in my contact guff on a piece of brown paper, walked back outside to scan the window-mounted menu, paid by contactless and recorded my place in history apparently as the first person to occupy the sole table in the whole place since maybe ever.

“Ooh,” a young woman in a beige trenchcoat at the counter is saying, pointing an arched pinkie towards a large bowl, “beautiful salad.” Funnily enough, I’m eating some of that beautiful salad.

German potato salad, since you ask. Frondy dill er fronds, pickled red cabbage, gherkin, olive oil, salt and pepper and good potatoes.

Very good potatoes. The whole thing having a pink hue, a crunchy, floury texture and, not something always found in the vegan nation, an awful lot of good culinary vibrations. Mustard? I think so.

An empanada swiftly follows, crinkly crumply edges, made, and I’m basing this entirely on a brief chat I had with the woman behind the counter yesterday as she tried to close up and I tried to order up ... by hand. Stuffed with mince, though not that kind of mince.

It disappears before my very eyes, and I pause only to wonder how much better it would have been straight out of an oven or, whisper this, fryer. Oh. We have another chat as I order today. I think the lady is American, but as Americans can sometimes turn out to be indignant Canadians I don’t ask.

I do ask about the chicken cutlet

Milanese (so does the woman with the beige coat and then someone else who wanders in – proving that vegan things can look extremely appetising even in a little old Gorbals shop-front display) and kind 124 Norfolk Street

Glasgow www.facebook.com/Zilchdeli/ Closed Sunday, Monday and Wednesday

Apparently it’s Glasgow’s first plant-based, plastic-free, artisan bakers and deli. Great selection of cutlets, cakes, bread. 4/5 of wish I hadn’t as this begins with lentils being fermented.

Not a phrase often associated with good eats. Then there’s boiling, ditto, followed by gluten removal, uh-huh, and some crumbing until at last there’s deep-frying (phew) and the liberal dousing of Thousand Island dressing that, like everything else, is apparently made by themselves.

Now, if you’re thinking that it’s often better for the appetite not to ask how vegan food is prepared, remember this. Meat, poultry and fish dishes always start with: first we killed something.

At the end of the explanation I do try a like joke-ette by suggesting it’s not like

Shop-front cafe with a few stools against the wall and a single four-seater table, yet somehow buzzing with life. 4/5 modern chicken actually tastes of anything any more. D’uh. She hasn’t tasted the stuff for 20 years. Neither have I, I suppose, but for entirely different reasons. Chicken being simply a grimly realised texture now.

Whereas this version? Pretty much a texture too, inoffensive, in a bakeryfresh baguette, slipping-and-a-sliding amidst tangy Thousand Island lettuce and tomato, occasional crunches from those breadcrumbs. If I didn’t know, I genuinely wouldn’t have known.

By the time I look up from all this, a new batch of customers will have drifted in, conversation across the counter and

The lady behind the counter was friendly, helpful and clearly proud of what they are doing. What’s not too like? 4/5

Dishes including that potato salad are about £2 to £6, sandwiches a bit more.

3/5

MY kind of ready meal is one I cook the night before and have ready to warm up as soon as we get home. Boiling beef, or runner beef, is one of the cheapest cuts and, cooked slowly with a few choice vegetables, it produces a large flank of tender beef and a light flavoursome broth.

We all love the “brodo” served with small pastina and lashings of grated parmesan, sometimes with a fresh egg poached in it as well. Add the melt-in-the-mouth pieces of meat to the soup and sweet chunks of carrot.

Alternatively, try nestling slices of meat on a huge mound of buttery mash and a lip-smacking dressing of salsa verde.

Boiled beef and carrots have never tasted so good.

Boiled beef and carrots

Makes you fat and it keeps you well

Don’t live like vegetarians On food they give to parrots Blow out your kite from morn’ till night

On boiled beef and carrots (Harry Champion – 1909)

BOILED BEEF AND CARROTS … PASTINA IN BRODO

PHOTOGRAPH BY COLIN MEARNS Zilch, plant-based bakery and deli, 124 Norfolk Street, Glasgow