Windows Glasgow
It's easy to miss the Carlton George Hotel, just along from Glasgow's Queen Street Station.
A tall thin building with a dark, nondescript reception, and dated, anodyne middle-range hotel decor, you would never think that it houses one of the most interesting eating spaces in Glasgow.
Up on a seventh-floor eyrie, it has Windows, said to be the only rooftop restaurant in the city. Low-roofed and with a wall of windows, its southern aspect takes in the Mackintosh tower of the Lighthouse. To the west you'll pick out William Stark's Baroque homage to Sir Christopher Wren, St George's Tron. If you can negotiate a seat in the window, there's a vista of spectacular roofscape showcasing the domes and spires of multiple architectural landmarks.
It feels like being in a bird's nest, up in Mary Poppins land. Any minute Dick Van Dyke might pop out of a chimney and perform a dance routine on the parapet.
The next surprise is that the food is extremely good, much better than you might expect from a chain-hotel restaurant. I would have predicted a boring steaksalmonsticky toffee pudding menu.
The choice is limited - five starters and main courses. A couple of additional daily specials wouldn't go amiss, but there were still a few dishes that suggest the kitchen, recently taken over by Will Hay, likes to push itself. This is cooking that is both competent and creative.
A starter of thinly sliced, raw smoked haddock, served with a dab of horseradish cream, salty segments of grapefruit, raw peas, pea shoots and warm crab fritters, made a delicate dish for a warm June evening as the sun sank lower in the sky. The sweetness of a compote of golden raisins worked nicely with smooth pork terrine whose subtle spicing supported and balanced the mellow flavour of the meat. A home-baked white pan loaf was worryingly moreish.
Our main courses were paragons of balance. This is one of the hardest things in cooking, achieving a favourable ratio of one ingredient to another, combining interesting elements without clashing flavours, using seasoning confidently but not heavy-handedly.
My cod had a fantastic, salty, crisp-fried crust but was luscious and pearly in the middle. It sat on just the right amount of firm bird's nest rice noodles. A layer of slightly pickled wild mushrooms gave the whole thing bite. Restrained amounts of a nutty ground hazelnut cream lent the requisite moisture without losing the essential freshness and lightness of the dish.
Another main course consisted of full-flavoured, slow-roasted chump of lamb, lightly coated in still-firm lentils that had been cooked in rich meat gravy with lots of fresh mint. A winning pea and goat's cheese mousse stopped the lamb from being a heavy winter number and kept it summery. Don't get the impression that we were eating like supermodels here. I can vouch for the sea salt and coarse pepper chips which were paragons of chipdom: the right sort of floury chipping spud, twice or even thrice fried to crisp perfection.
There are deviations from the menu. I ordered lemon jelly (with basil cream and pistachio biscuit) but got a strawberry jelly (with the said accompaniments). I wasn't complaining when I tasted it, because the jelly was fragrant and the basil in the cream had an intriguing presence that stopped the cream being boring. The biscuit was so thin and crisp that the pistachio taste was ghost-like. I'd go for something chunkier personally.
In another dessert, a vanilla milkshake was teamed up with a smidgen of fresh raspberry compote, a scoop of raspberry sorbet and addictively friable, buttery chocolate shortbread. Here I would have liked more compote and a thicker milkshake, but as a twosome, these were both very acceptable pudds, and just a little bit different.
Front of house staff have a very pleasant attitude, and there's a great little roof terrace for tea and coffee. The only hazard here is noise.
The extractor system from the open kitchen sounds like a chorus of industrial hoovers, and Windows accepts large groups. Book for a romantic diner-a-deux and you could get stuck beside a graduation party or a hen night.