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Upmarket bar food Chaos and cuisine is a recipe for disaster, but the staff save the day
IT’S not a good sign when, long after your stomach starts rumbling, the waiter is back at your table. “This is a bit shambolic, isn’t it?” he confesses. Bear in mind that he’s saying this ages after we initially shuffle in, wait awkwardly at the door while some top bar-staff chat takes place, finally sit down, wait too long again, order some food at last, then reorder that very food. Because the waiter has decided he’s going to write it down this time. And has to go off and get a pen.
None of the above is even the shambolic bit. The shambolic bit is the waiter coming back again, long after it feels tumbleweed has bounced past our table, long after the sun has risen and set and risen again, to tell us this: “See that order that was taken? A while ago? It’s, er, been lost. Or scrunched up and thrown away. Or eaten. Or something. And could you order again?”
Now, it’s all very well serving restaurant-quality food in hip ’n’ happening and very nicely upholstered-in-Harris Tweed gastro pubs. But if you are going to charge restaurant prices, too, then you better provide restaurant service.
And that means you can’t really have two guys doing two jobs – manning the bar, say, as well as serving – at the very same time and hope it’s going to be all right on the night. Even if they are nice guys. And they definitely are.
The funny thing is this, though, that we’re not actually hugely bothered. Largely because there’s a good feel in here tonight. It’s warm, it’s comfortable, it’s nicely laid out, all the other diners appear so straight-out-ta-reality telly that I wonder if they’re paid to sit here, looking glamorous, making the whole place feel like it’s got something going on. Seriously.
Even when we’ve finished our complimentary – to make up for the shambles, sir – desserts. Even when the waiter then asks: “Do you have another bank card?” Even when the piano in my head suddenly stops playing and I think: “It’s been declined,” prompting flashbacks of being publicly stripped of my messages in Tesco as a disapproving supervisor pointed to the exit – as may or may not have happened. Even then, we still kind of like it in here. And? The card isn’t declined at all. The machine was upside down. Or had been eaten. Or something. Phew.
As for the food? This place is apparently run by the people who own The Drake, one of Glasgow’s stealthily cool and consistently good joints. A former hangout of ex-Celtic and now Hibs manager Neil Lennon and other celebs. I liked the food there and see the same sort of food here.
Except tonight the food, too, has some problems. We started with a fairly straightforward yet kind of bland crab cannelloni with pickled fennel; a completely-unsmoked-tasting smoked chicken salad with duck egg, parmesan and rocket that was still delicious; and a possibly too- ambitious, because it was unseasoned and just a bit stringy, pigeon with black pudding croquette and smoked carrot puree.
The main of pork cheek, in a light stew with garden peas and bacon, mushroom and potato, was fine on paper but lacked anything to counter the unending sameness of it all.
The beer-braised short-rib beef, served on the bone with pumpkin and delicious kale? Very, very fatty. Something they recognised without us saying anything and took completely off the bill. Kind of saving the day, in service terms anyway.
They then went on to provide free
desserts too. A good salted caramel and chocolate tart, a nearly good, if it had only had more sugar and salted butter in the crumble, pear tart. And a lightly flavoured earl grey panna cotta. No show stoppers there, though.
They do do an excellent light, crusted, crisply fired artichoke and spinach pizza.
If it was a freak disaster night, they deserve another chance. If it’s gastropubbery without thinking the whole thing through? There may be trouble ahead.