GetStuffed FoodDrinkRestaurants
Gaucho Marks
Glasgow city centre welcomes a Brazilian-themed chain offering a sunny attitude, piles of meat and controversial red cards. Andrea Pearson reports
> RECENT OPENINGS The best of the new restaurant, café and bar openings in Glasgow and Edinburgh, reviewed in every issue by The List’s team of independent reviewers
Glasgow
CLARK & SONS 14 Busby Road, Clarkston Toll, Southside, 0141 638 3911, www.clark-and-sons.com £9.95 (set lunch) / £17 (dinner) Some ideas are so good you wonder why they took so long. Opening a sophisticated but affordable bar and restaurant in Clarkston is one – and it’s a gap just filled by Citation proprietor Ryan Barrie. Clark & Sons occupies a vast and comfy open-plan area containing a bar, restaurant and function room, and serving everything from breakfast eggs to rib eye steaks. Dishes are well presented and very tasty and, before 7pm, the set menu – a tenner for two courses – even includes a glass of wine. See? How come it took so long?
Edinburgh NONNA’S KITCHEN
45 Morningside Road, Southside, 0131 466 6767, £12 (lunch) / £21 (dinner) A friendly, warm and welcoming venture from the family behind the much-missed original Patio, this is a more contemporary take on Italian dining. A vast menu offers a choice of breads, antipasti, pasta, pizza and secondi, including a variety of daily changing seafood dishes. Classic spaghetti aglio, olio e peperoncino is bursting with flavour and perfectly al dente while freshly caught seabass fillets are simply seared, moist and served with well-seasoned seasonal vegetables. Expertly-made tiramisu is the dessert you wish would never end. A real family focus makes this a great place to bring children.
I f you despair at the thought of summer vanishing without having cracked open a bag of charcoal, don’t. Glasgow’s latest concept diner, Tropeiro, has arrived to cheer us up with an all-you-can-eat-in-your-seat barbecue buffet. Thanks to a traffic-light card system – green for more please; red for I am full – great hunks of hot, sizzling meat keep arriving at the table on giant skewers. There are ten cuts of pork, beef, lamb and chicken – but it is wise to choose carefully as they are variable. Tender and rare beef contrasts with unforgiving pork ribs, and sausage and chicken pieces grabbed enthusiastically at the start mean a crisp and juicy lamb joint is sadly red- carded later. To accompany there are salads, olives, chillies, peppers, rice, potatoes and even more meat in the form of Feijoada, a tasty pork
62 THE LIST 26 Aug–9 Sep 2010
and black bean stew. The only Brazilian pudding is a pleasant if sweet passion fruit mousse but the highlight is the Caipirinha, a Brazilian cane rum and lime cocktail, which makes you forget the grey skies in two slurps.
+ Caipirinha – Peaking too early TROPEIRO
363 Argyle Street, City Centre, Glasgow,
0141 222 2102, www.tropeiro.co.uk, Mon–Fri noon–3pm, 5.30pm–10.30pm; Sat
noon–10.30pm; Sun 1–10pm. Ave. price two-
course meal: £9.95 (set lunch) / £21.50 (set dinner)
CASTLE TERRACE 33/35 Castle Terrace, West End, 0131 229 1222, www.castleterracerestaurant.com £19.50 (set lunch) / £35 (dinner) Set up and backed by Tom and Michaela Kitchin, Castle Terrace offers a sister restaurant to The Kitchin located in the city centre, with many of the original’s appealing attributes, such as the linen-free tables and muted contemporary decor, overlapping. Tom Kitchin, however, remains resolutely behind the stoves in Leith, with Edinburgh-born Dominic Jack in charge of the new kitchen as chef patron. He offers his classical style to nteresting local ingredients, from Newhaven spider crab to Perthshire giroles, offering clean tastes, intriguing textural contrasts and precisely presented dishes.