Cail Bruich West
725 Great Western Road,Glasgow,
G128QX
0141 334 6265
Price Ratings
£ – inexpensive
££ – mid-price
£££ – expensive
££££ – very expensive
Reviews
Billed to last
Review published on 15/12/2008 © Sunday Herald
Expect a flurry of restaurant closures in the new year. Fewer people are eating out in the recession, and restaurateurs daren't put up their prices even though their costs have risen alarmingly.
Cream, butter, bread, meat, eggs ... all ingredient costs have shot up and a weak pound against the Euro has produced steep hikes in restaurants' wine bills. To add to these woes, our cavalier banks, having encouraged us all to get up to the eyeballs in debt, are reining in their lending to make their own books balance. Once the Christmas flurry is over, many restaurateurs will wake up to stuttering cash flow and heavy pressure from the bank manager.
The really expensive establishments that offer treats and luxury will probably scrape by, although even they may have to demonstrate that they do offer some accessibly-priced eating opportunities.
Corporate credit cards are thin on the ground these days and upmarket restaurants will have to work hard if they aren't to be branded prohibitively expensive.
The bargain £9.95 "amazing grazing" lunch menu at Michael Caines' Abode in Glasgow illustrates how prescient restaurateurs understand that they must respond and adapt to straitened economic circumstances.
At the cheaper end of the market, places with good value ethnic food or enlightened modern eateries offering economy cuts and comforting seasonal food, like David Ramsden's rip-roaringly successful venture The Dogs in Edinburgh, will be lean and fit enough to survive.
The main casualties in the brave new restaurant world will be mid-priced restaurants with aspirations to fine dining that routinely knock you back £80 or thereabouts for two. Who needs them, if they are neither truly cheap nor truly brilliant?
Cail Bruich, in Glasgow's west end, might look as though it is in this tricky mid-range category, but it has had the good sense to put on a weekday evening menu at £13.50 and £16.50 for two and three courses respectively. This affordable menu doesn't feel like a tokenistic second best option either, in fact I prefer it to the pricier a la carte. When we visited I had one of the best starters and definitely the best vegetarian dish that I've had all year, a warm wild mushroom and goat's cheese terrine, served in a crustily-fried slice and pungent with white truffle oil. It upstaged our other starter of smoked mackerel and herb pate, served with a little salad, earthy beetroot, creme fraiche and sourdough toast, but this was still a nice straightforward offering. Sometimes, that's just what you want.
Cail Bruich deals in generous portions, so you won't go away hungry, and the cooking is pretty even and capable. The kitchen made a really good job of an ox cheek pudding in suet crust, all melting strands of beef and biscuity crust moistened with rich brown gravy. Its wild mushroom, chestnut and parsley gravy stopped it being stodgy and added more interest. Roast belly of pork, which had been liberally doused in honey, might have had crackling a touch crisper, fat a little better rendered and flesh that might have been creamier.
Its accompanying Lyonnaise potatoes tasted rather too much of potato starch and undercooked onion, but with a coarse mustard gravy and roasted apples, it felt unreasonable to grumble. Ordering seasonal vegetables, everything that came actually fitted that bill; carrots, red cabbage, neeps and sprouts. I cannot remember ever being served sprouts in a restaurant, which is a pity, because an imaginative cook can do a lot of good things with them.
I have an ideological difference with the chef over the recipe for treacle tart. Cail Bruich's version had the right look and consistency, but I couldn't taste anything other than an explosion of almond essence. In my book, the only renegade flavour you need consider adding to the sticky, buttery, breadcrumb goo is lemon zest. Almond essence? Bin it. It bullies every other flavour into oblivion. Otherwise, a prune and Armagnac cheesecake made a pleasant dessert and its compote of spiced poached plums demonstrated how to make something of all those tough-skinned, imported black Angelino variety plums that have set up a year-round presence on our shelves.
I have a good feeling about Cail Bruich. I think it's going to be a survivor.
Dining experience won’t suit all tastes
Review published on 10/11/2009 © Sunday Herald
When you meet some people for dinner, you just know the food will take a back seat. More interested in catching up with the few months that have passed and all the news that’s been missed, few other people can captivate as much as one of my former high-school teachers who lights up a room.
With stories from her worldwide adventures, including drinks with Andy Warhol and banter with Joan Rivers (and that was in the one evening), I knew I was going to have to stay alert to the meal and my surroundings when I was dining with such a delightfully distracting friend.
Meeting early evening for a catch-up, in my friend’s west end patch, our meal started perfectly with a spot-on gin and tonic. The service started off almost too attentively as menus were thrust upon as and we pondered the wine list with half an eye on the small but enticing food selection. We opted for a chilled white Rioja, which unfortunately was the most successful choice of the evening.
It was the start of mushroom overdose for my dining companion, when an amuse bouche wild mushroom soup was served in espresso cups. A small quibble would be that they arrived before we’d finished our aperitifs and we didn’t start them until they were cooling, but the extra mini course made us both think that perhaps there was more attention to detail than normal, veering our opinion from bistro to fine dining.
As soon as our small cups were empty, the starters arrived promptly, though almost too promptly. I had gone for a pressed terrine of ham hough and foie gras with piccalilli, served with toasted sourdough, while my friend had chosen warm wild mushroom and confit onion tart, with poached hen’s egg and hollandaise sauce.
My meat terrine was tasty and well seasoned but the sourdough was almost inedible and so crunchy it was verging on stale. The vegetable tart was more successful and I was told the hollandaise was suitably sharp to cut through the rich mixture of flavours.
Our main courses were corn fed chicken leg with pomme puree and wild mushrooms (noticing a theme?) and I had the fillet of sea bream with pepperonata and confit fennel.
As a seasoned pre-theatre partaker, what was first apparent was the small portions and the fact that the accompanying vegetables seemed to be missing something. Although the chicken was tasty, the pomme puree was more smash than panache with very little culinary effort in evidence. I was convinced to try it to make sure the blandness was not just subjectivity brought on by excessive mushrooms. My bream was well cooked, if a little on the small side, but the whole didn’t quite work as a dish with flavours fighting with a distinct lack of comforting cohesiveness.
It was at this moment a large party arrived, breaking up the quiet buzz of conversation with a clatter of chairs and a dose of general mayhem. And it was also at this moment we were wholly forgotten. We sat with the dessert menu for so long that not even the dark chocolate and pecan brownie could convince us to order another course, even with two spoons.
After another long wait we realised we’d have to fetch our own jackets and while I investigated the back quarters of the restaurant, I wished I’d enjoyed the meal more as I looked into the bustling kitchen and saw cheese being prepared on a makeshift surface in the rear corridor.
That kind of hand-knitted approach can normally sway me into praise but as we left unnoticed and unsatisfied, I hoped we’d just caught them on a bad night.
I hadn’t expected the food and service to be the main distraction with which I’d have to contend.