The Herald - The Herald Magazine
BBQ joint Burger restaurants are ten a penny these days. So is there room for yet another?
WE blow in at the tail-end of an evening of drifting round the city centre in search of something to eat, eyeing suspiciously the notion of a barbecue pit here. In Royal Exchange Square, of all places, where the fairy lights sparkle high in the sky, where the art gallery twinkles, only yards from where the culinary deadening hand of the city planners is surely at its most smothering.
You still can’t hardly get a wood-fired pizza oven licence in Glasgow, I say to Garry by way of conversation as we peer in. Though Paesano down there on Miller Street has one and thrives on it, not least because the price is also quite frankly so right.
We’re gazing around as we sit down and consider Smoak, shoehorned into what I’m sure I recall used to be a sandwich bar. It’s all veneers and neons and peeling laminated menu, kind of Midnight Cowboy meets Pizza Express.
So far I’m not feeling the love, Ratso, but its also relaxed and quiet tonight and the grown-up welcome is warm from the man at the bar and soon we’re picking our way through a rack of Ayrshire baby ribs at £13.95 that are soft and sweet and frankly pretty hard to fault. Smoked low and slow for 14 hours each day, drawls the menu, and therefore I ask our waitperson where that low and slow smoke pit action takes place, there not being much sign of much smoaking out here.
“Through there,” we’re told as we move on to Texas Toast – cheese on toast served large. And on again to Vladimir Poutine which as surely the whole world now knows involves the act of pouring Canadian-style cheese curds and gravy onto old fashioned chips and then, in here anyway, sprinkling the whole lot with hunks of tender barbecued brisket, caramelised onion and, of course, some healthy chives.
It’s the sort of thing that gets a town like Glasgow a bad name because it’s just so damn wrong but tastes so damn right. We two old guys certainly eat it all, though I’m not so sure your mum would touch its gooey, messy, fat-bomb deliciousness.
Incoming newsflash, in case you aren’t aware: thanks to Instagram and doctored pictures of bare-chested presidents riding brown bears, Vlad Putin is actually a cult figure among the smaller school dudes, or certainly my No2 son and his little pals.
Oh, there were forgettable little dishes of remoulade and purple slaw with those ribs and, yes, I do know that smoking doesn’t just come from pits, but from sealed stainless-steel cabinets that can be squeezed in just about anywhere.
On the subject of smoking, I balk at the texture and tone of the Oil Slick Chicken, marinated in black ale and smoked for you for just £9.95. The meat’s simply too gelatinous for me, though Garry hoovers it up. In fact I ask the waitperson, now a young woman, if it’s meant to be that colour and texture inside. Hey, I’m not saying it’s not, I’m just curious. After a bit of awkwardness along the lines of “people don’t ask these sort of questions” and a bit of eye rolling from Garry across the table, off she goes to the kitchen to check.
“It’s been probed,” is pretty much the short and not very satisfying answer. Meaning, I suppose, probed for internal temperature.
There’s a bit of muttering between her and the previously garrulous man
standing at the bar and I await more info. None comes. Frankly? A bit offhand. Am I entirely sure about Smoak? No, maybe because we’ve also blown in tonight at the tail-end of a manfood revolution that set out out to bring quality and genuineness to things like burgers and steaks, and is now being silently gobbled up by the corporate killers who ruined everything in the first place. But maybe that’s just me.
If you know a restaurant Ron should review, email ronmackenna@fastmail.fm
I balk at the texture and tone of the Oil Slick Chicken, marinated in black ale. The meat’s simply too gelatinous