The Herald - The Herald Magazine
EATING OUT AND DRINK
IAM NOT saying it’s too noisy up here but when I ask if the fish is grilled the waitress recoils and shouts: “How’s the fish killed?” We clear that misunderstanding up and later, when a whole grilled plaice doesn’t appear, we put that down to the hard-to-hear factor too.
For a short while though it is unbelievably loud on the mezzanine. Something to do with a kiddies’ disco downstairs, a food truck convention outside and a roof-level speaker hanging pretty much right behind our empty heads.
As we look over the mob eating woodfired pizzas from Nomad, or tacos from the Chompsky Food Truck outside, or simply petting their dug as the man two tables along is doing, it’s hard to deny it’s going like a fair. Amid all this crackpot chaos we are quietly eating starters of smoked salmon and crab cannelloni with puffed capers for £7 and whole salt-baked golden beetroot, braised fennel and smoked horseradish foam for £6. Surreal.
I’m not in the business of giving people advice but I’d take that £12 scallop starter off the menu if I was them. And the £8 rabbit. Not only were they the very first things we saw, making us goggle at the prices in the Barras nowadays, but it may be a new Glasgow scallop starter price record.
When the main course whole plaice finally arrives, though? It’s a beautiful fish, grilled perfectly to its crispy edges, steaming, soft and creamy inside, prompting Leo to say that it might be one of the best fish he has had for a long time and it’s just £12. The same price as that scallop starter.
I have a square of halibut that is just the way I always want to eat it: grilled, the surface caramelised and golden brown, the meat firm and white and juicy, the whole thing atop a pile of wilted spinach, and just £14. Perfect. I could eat it every single day.
There’s more good fish – a plate of sardines, charred at the edges, that we eat with our fingers, salty samphire heaped around it. It’s maybe not yet the Scottish sardine season in November but with global warming who knows?
Back to those starters. The cannelloni? Hmm. Apple gel, squid ink and crunchy puffed capers are served with a cannelloni that is actually smoked salmon rolled round a crab filling. Quite nice, but possibly a bit fussy and conventional in this setting.
If you’ve not yet noticed, A’ Challtainn is either a completely misguided attempt to launch a Brick Lane in the heart of Glasgow’s rough-and-ready Calton or an act of foresight and genius. I think they may be on to something. Judging by the turnout today as we picked our way past stalls on the way in, the Glasgow Barras ain’t the market it once was, yet the buildings have an attractive industrial edge. This would make a fantastic restaurant quarter one day. But I’ve been here on a winter’s night and at that time this location, bang in the middle of the dead market, is quite, er, challenging.
OK, beetroot starter, anyone? Pleasant golden beetroot with fennel and shallot puree, and a smoked horseradish foam that doesn’t add much and given the setting makes the whole thing seems too a bit fussy.
The pont neuf – or Jenga-like potato
A square of halibut is grilled, the surface caramelised and golden brown, the meat firm and white and juicy. Perfect. I could eat it every single day
batons – with caper salsa? Frankly not great, being soggy, flabby and watery on the grounds of nobody having thought, I wonder what the best potatoes would be to use here? The mac ’n’ cheese, too, we don’t rate – it being more mac ’n’ cream.
But … the kiddies’ disco has gone now. It’s all calmed down. There are a couple of guys playing classical guitar in the courtyard. We’re chilling. And you know, fussy dishes aside, that grilled fish was very good.
If you know a restaurant Ron should review, email ronmackenna@fastmail.fm