MERCHANT CITY LOVE AFFAIR
Glasgow’s Café Gandolfi is still reeling them in after 30 years, which has as much to do with its head chef as its aspirations
Café Gandolfi has been a Glasgow institution for 30 years
With a childhood spent in the kitchen helping her mother and grandmother, it’s hardly surprising that when Joanne Munro got the opportunity to change career, she chose to be a chef. And 15 years after finding her vocation, Joanne is now head chef at a Glasgow institution – Café Gandolfi, in the city’s Merchant City enclave.
‘I was hugely interested in cooking and just loved to cook at home,’ Joanne explains. ‘My mother was a great cook, my grandmother was a great cook and I spent my childhood in the kitchen with them. Then I got a chance to change my career and went into Jacques Boyeldieu’s kitchen at his restaurant 1901 in Pollokshaws. I had no formal training, but he was just fabulous and very influential. He was so passionate about what he was doing and generous with everything he knew.
‘After 1901, I ran the kitchen at an independent Glasgow hotel, but the team was small and I wasn’t really learning anything. Gandolfi was always somewhere I’d admired and was a customer of, so I approached Lynne, the manager, and Seumas MacInnes, the owner, and they gave me a job.’
The move proved to be a natural fit for Joanne. ‘As soon as I joined I was really aware of the quality of the produce being purchased. When I became sous chef I started to take control of some of the specials.
‘The restaurant has been here for so long that there are lots of things on the menu that are complete standards and classics and would never be played around with, but I guess we can experiment a bit more with the specials, and include more world food – I get inspired when I go on holiday, or visit London’s Borough Market – but the ethos is very much that the produce is Scottish.
‘I know everyone now talks about seasonality, but that’s how I’ve always worked. Our menu very much depends on what produce is available that week, so it keeps our ideas fresh.
‘I work very closely with suppliers, and they always know we’re up for trying something a little bit different. I work with a great butcher and I’ve got some nice rabbit at the moment, so that’s what I’m going to do this weekend. It’s going to go into a Spanish-inspired almond sauce. We also use a great supplier in Arran who grows organic vegetables. I love a Friday morning when these massive boxes arrive and there’s the most mental-looking veg inside.
‘For the last month we’ve had asparagus on the menu in about five different dishes every day, just because the season is so short and I wouldn’t use it if it wasn’t Scottish. In fact we’re using asparagus now that’s grown out near Glasgow airport, so I don’t think we could get it any closer. I’m also in the process of smoking some nice big Portobello mushrooms – we do a lot of that sort of thing ourselves. We’re then going to bread them like a schnitzel. I’m planning an asparagus risotto, but when we make risotto we like to add something with a different texture, so with these mushrooms it will be our take on a Milanese type of dish.’
There seems no doubt that 30 years after this much loved establishment opened its doors having been inspired by the Gaelic proverb Deagh bhiadh, deagh bheannachd – ‘Well fed, well blessed’, Café Gandolfi looks set to bless its customers with a lot more of the same.