Old city pub needs better quality of food to get back on track for success
The Granary has had a couple of facelifts recently. One of them was an accident but the other one was deliberate. A bit like some of those folk you see on the TV in LA. Only this old Glasgow pub’s better-looking.
A few years ago, hefty weather took the signage off the front of the wedge-shaped boozer on the southside. Fixed at the time, the whole place has since been given another nip and tuck inside and out.
The new exterior is clean and classy with a mini mural on the wall depicting the bar’s past as a tram depot back in the days before someone thought it would be a good idea to take them all away and replace them with buses.
The spruce-up continues inside and so too the homage to the past across the front triangular-shaped bar (which feels like a cosy pub) p and the main hall behind it (which doesn’t). The front bar has even reinstated the long-running feature in the bar – a model train, which skirts the room on an overhead track.
It should be a clue to anyone from the council drinking here about a solution to the inadequate transport links in this popular part of the city.
It’s just a pity the food didn’t match the surroundings. We visited on a Sunday and, while the place had a decent vibe and the service was pretty good, lunch left us cold.
The steak and Guinness pie was more pie than steak, the colcannon mash had no cabbage through it – that’s just mash, chef – and the mac and cheese was flavourless and rubbery.
This place is crying out to be a good Sunday roast joint but it’s a bad day when Pub Spy has had better steak pie out of a Fray Bentos tin.
The new-look Granary has a lot going for it. It’s quirky but with a traditional boozer vibe in a part of town where hipsters are eroding tradition.
We’ll catch the train back but we’ll stick to crisps with our pint.