Food&Drink News&Reviews
Time for change Andrea Pearson considers if a new restaurant can help reinstate Glasgow’s made-over Central Hotel as a city icon
SIDE DISHES NEWS TO NIBBLE ON
NEWHAVEN’S POPULAR café-deli-bistro Porto & Fi is preparing to open up a
second, similar operation on the Mound in late April. Owner Andrew Macinnes said he was keen to bring Porto’s love of local produce to the city centre. Keep an eye on its website www.portofi.com for more.
TO HELP CELEBRATE the Songkran Festival from 13–15 April marking the
traditional Thai New Year, Krua Thai Cookery School based in Liberton, Edinburgh, is running a series of courses teaching authentic Thai cuisine as well as fruit and vegetable carving. Visit www.kruathai.co.uk for more information.
MERRYLEE ROAD bar and brasserie on the south side of Glasgow has expanded its operation with the addition of Surf ’n’ Turf, a dining room dedicated to fine home-grown meat, fish and seafood using suppliers such as butcher Tom Rodgers and MacCallums fishmongers. To celebrate, owner Gordon Yuill has installed a suitably patriotic work of art by Gerard Burns.
V ictorian visitors to the Central Hotel in Glasgow, built in 1883, must have felt they ruled the world. The steam trains fuming in the station outside sped goods from the Clyde ports across the country. In the ballroom, wealthy industry barons danced under glass chandeliers, toasting their great fortune.
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And later, too, the hotel shone. It was the place to be when Frank Sinatra, Sir Winston Churchill and John F Kennedy stayed. In 1927 John Logie Baird used it as a base to test his earliest TV transmissions. But decline followed. For years the only thing more tired than the carpets were the weary staff left to witness the decay. In many ways it reflects the story of the city itself.
So last year, when new owners Principal Hayley announced a £20m refit, cheers were heard across Glasgow. It is still a work in progress – but in the last few weeks the Tempus restaurant has opened. Taking centre stage are the original glass chandeliers, rescued from a storeroom, and pieced lovingly back together. There’s new life too in the eager staff team. They are very helpful and easy going, perhaps a little too easy going – they can advise on the excellent selection of wine but on the other hand they may not notice when your glass is empty.
28 THE LIST 31 Mar–28 Apr 2011
New life and new thinking Vegetables as extras
The menu has a mix of expense- account favourites – steak, lobster, burger – and more creative fare such as woodland mushroom ravioli. Seafood features, and delivers, very strongly – ultra fresh scallops are lightly seared and a seafood casserole has a highly competent fish stock at its base.
Some dishes are perhaps prematurely labelled as ‘signature’ – particularly something as generic as steak and grilled tomatoes – but the signature pork belly with pear cider sauce is a winner. Similarly the puddings feature crowd pleasers, such as sticky toffee and apple tarte tatin, alongside true originals such as a splendid rum-roasted carpaccio of pineapple with coconut ice-cream. Tempus probably won’t change the face of dining in Glasgow, but with this level of enthusiasm it must surely propel the Grand Central back onto the map.
TEMPUS
Grand Central Hotel, 99 Gordon Street, Glasgow, 0141 240 3700, www.principal-hayley.com
Food: Sun–Thu 6pm–9.30pm; Fri & Sat 6pm–9.45pm
Average price two-course meal: £25
BAR CRAWLER
BRASS MONKEY 362 Leith Walk, Edinburgh
Another Leith Walk bruiser’s boozer bites the dust in favour of an upmarket remodel, with the former Horseshoe becoming a second branch of Drummond Street’s student- friendly pub-come-micro- cinema, Brass Monkey. Daily films and pub food are on the way here, and there’s much more space than up the road.