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10 Clarendon Street, Maryhill, G20 7QD. Tel: 0141 333 1435

FOOD *** ATMOSPHERE *** SERVICE ****

IT was Friday night and as my latest case came to its conclusion, attention turned to the Moll’s evergrowing Christmas list. Needless to say, it had me feeling sheepish.

“Come on Tec, it’ll be great. They do it every year on I’m a Celebrity…” said Toots.

“I know it’s difficult to comprehend, given my Hollywood-style good looks, but I’m NOT a Celebrity and I’m not jumping out of a plane with you”, I responded, “I am in the mood for some grub, however, and before you ask, not the jungle type”.

We hopped into the Buick and headed for Maryhill and into a small family-run restaurant known as the Black Sheep Bistro.

As we walked inside and were shown to our table, we were delighted to find a warm, friendly atmosphere. And we were even more thrilled at the menu. “Wow, what a selection,” said Goldilocks. “I could eat them all”. As it turned out, she was way off the mark – the portion sizes were massive.

We skipped the starters and went straight for the mains, with one eye each on the desserts. Dollface went for the chicken Balmoral which was served in a whisky sauce with clapshot.

The chicken was cooked perfectly, and the haggis stuffing was tasty and plentiful. It was all wrapped in a delicious slice of Parma ham which was complemented beautifully by the creamy potato and neeps clapshot. The whisky sauce was lovely but there was a little bit too much of that for Toots’ liking.

For my main I got steak pie served with mash and veg. The steak pie was packed with tender beef and the pastry was flaky and baked to perfection. The creamy potato mash went down a treat and the carrots were buttery with a nice bite to them. It was a fantastic dish.

On to the desserts and we shared the trio of “minis”. But again, these dishes were not so mini.

The first was meringue underneath a tower of puff candy ice-cream. It was sweet and tasty.

Next up was the raspberry and white chocolate cheesecake. The biscuit base was lovely and the raspberries were juicy but this dish was lacking in white chocolate flavour and the accompanying ice-cream was bland.

The final dessert was a chocolate brownie with Baileys cream and hazelnut meringue and ice-cream. The brownie was warm and went beautifully with the ice-cream.

We had a thoroughly enjoyable evening at the Black Sheep Bistro – the small restaurant with the big hearty meals.