The Restaurant Bar & Grill Glasgow
I wasn’t predisposed to like the Restaurant Bar & Grill in Glasgow's Princes Square. For a kick-off, it has taken over from Etain, which was one of the city's better restaurants, and joined it up with Zinc, which was much more ordinary. Next, the Restaurant Bar & Grill is a chain, albeit a smallish chain, with just seven restaurants in places as diverse as Liverpool and Tunbridge Wells. Lastly, the menu didn't really grab me. It is one of those globetrotting, a little-bit-of-this, little-bit-of-that jobs. Thai green curry, Moroccan tagine, Asian platters, fish and chips, salade Niçoise, all rubbing shoulders with brasserie-style grills. I know that this all-over-the-place eclecticism is the way of the restaurant world, but I don't go for it. Potentially, it's the gastronomic version of Jack of all trades, master of none.
But, to my amazement, we had a very good meal indeed. By the time I left, I truly did believe that the chef takes seriously the menu promise that "all our food is freshly prepared on the premises and carefully sourced from prime ingredients". What's more, the place itself is great fun. In its reincarnation, the Restaurant Bar & Grill feels straight out of Manhattan. The new management has taken down the floaty white curtains and exposed the old Etain space to a bird's eye view of urban Glasgow. At night, its tall Victorian sandstone tenements with external fire escapes and towers of brightly lit windows twinkling away in the midnight blue sky look exhilaratingly urban.
Where Etain used to have a wall of inhibiting mirrors - who really wants to watch themselves eating? - two long rectangular windows have been knocked through to the kitchen. Now you can see the chefs beavering away, which really adds to the sense of excitement. Centre-stage is a steel rotisserie spit and a "woodstone" oven. Take the wood bit with a pinch of salt. Real wood would be a civic crime these days, so we have to make do with a gas-fired model with hot stones. The results are not those you would get from the real McCoy, but the breads baked in this oven - an airy focaccia and a crusty white - were noticeably better than most of the bread that a restaurant could buy in.
I was hesitant about sharing the mezze platter, but then quite amazed by how fresh and home-made the constituents were. Hummus, tabbouleh, smoky aubergine purée, crumbly falafel ... these were all first-rate, and the more simple items, such as olives, were superior specimens of their kind.
Our main courses were big hits too. Hurrah! A restaurant that is not scared to serve meat on the bone. My corn-fed Goosnargh chicken from Lancashire had been spatchcocked then roasted in the oven, and its skin had gone all crispy and golden. Suckling pig had been stuffed with herbs then spit-roasted, producing full-flavoured, slightly gelatinous meat and even more wonderful skin and fat. It went brilliantly with dessert apples, baked with honey. Hot lobster on the half-shell was memorably succulent, just cooked and no more, its accompanying winey risotto thoroughly infused with the almost medicinal taste of saffron. The rice was firm, but oozing nicely, just as it should be. Both fat chips and thin chips were crusty and creamy-centred, as if someone had taken the bother to cook them twice. Seasonal side greens, brightly coloured and lightly steamed, came doused in a chervil butter. We licked our lips and scraped the bones of any residual flesh. Thumbs up all round.
Desserts? They plough a chocolate-fudgy furrow and are more country-house heavy than metropolitan chic. That said, no-one complained about either the pudding that disgorged a glossy dark chocolate sauce, or the assertively vanilla-flavoured New York-style baked cheesecake. I went for a simple strawberry ice cream to check out the kitchen's "all home-made" boast. Reeking of fruit and with a likeably amateur consistency, it came up trumps.
It is a pleasure to be served by people who are well-informed about the dishes and so patently well-co-ordinated with the rhythm of the kitchen. Service, food and atmosphere get big ticks. Better still, considering what you get, Restaurant Bar & Grill is easy on the wallet.