La Parmigiana, Glasgow - Restaurants in Glasgow | s1play.com

A vintage treat

Review published on 20/03/2007 © Sunday Herald

La Parmigiana is a venerable restaurant. It opened its doors in 1978, and with its 30th anniversary looming, it clearly qualifies for a long-service medal.

That is quite an achievement. These days, restaurants, not unlike marriages, come and go at a frightening speed. Over-ambitious business aspirations, terrifying rents and rates, and the promiscuity of modern diners all make for a volatile cocktail of instability and a motley procession of doomed ventures.

This restaurant, on the other hand, now qualifies for that dual-edged compliment of being a Glasgow dining institution. Don't take this as code for implying that it has one foot in the grave. While there is certainly something very old school about La Parmigiana, there is absolutely no sign that it is creaking at the seams or resting on its laurels.

Walking in here the other day was like stepping into a discreet, dining club in Milan, favoured by well-informed local dignitaries. It has the hum of easy conversation, the chinking of glass, the clatter of fork on plate and the appetising kitchen aromas that flag up a well-patronised, busy, eating place.

The average age of waiters seems to be around 50 and they have all the ease and expertise that experience brings. It is the sort of place where if you eat there once, you will be recognised and welcomed on future visits. The service feels personal, the place seems cared for and intimate, while the atmosphere is traditional but not stuffy.

The menu is refreshing in that it is fairly authentically Italian, both in concept and in presentation. Venison, which is usually given the cabbage and spuds treatment in Scottish establishments, is served with Italian salsiccia on a crusty polenta crouton. Boring chicken breast is stuffed with spinach, mortadella and parmesan, its richness cut by a white wine and thyme gravy.

My enthusiasm for pasta has declined of late. In this country, unlike its native soil, pasta courses tend to be clumsy, misunderstood and super-sized. Basta pasta, is my usual reaction, but thank heavens I acted out of character and went for the cuttlefish tagliolini, a manageable starter of thin, bouncy black noodles lubricated by fishy oil flavoured with finely chopped razor clams and chilli.

This was the best sort of Italian cooking: simple, few ingredients, no fuss, intrinsically satisfying. Across the table, the pasta formed into lobster ravioli and served with a creamy, blushing pink sauce, was silky and fine. Its lobster flavour was mute, but the basil suffused the sauce and saved the day.

I was eyeing up the popular main course on the well-priced lunch menu - a good-looking and well-priced sole Livornese (with fresh tomatoes, capers and olives) - when our main courses turned up. The kitchen seems to operate a certain licence when it comes to substituting ingredients.

My Gressingham duck breast, which was meant to come with cherries and red cabbage came instead with sweet red grapes, an unannounced but acceptable seasonal change. The meat itself was as interesting as duck breast ever is - give me the leg and thigh any day - but its red wine and vinegar sour-sweet sauce was perfectly balanced and a great accompaniment to the bird.

The other main course of succulent, crisp-skinned guinea fowl on the bone also came with an expertly judged sauce flavoured with grappa, rosemary and bosky porcini mushrooms.

Zabaglione – the Italian dessert where eggs are whipped over heat with sweet wine – is another of Italy's great culinary gifts to the world. It is a fine example of how straightforward recipes, well done, can shine. But timing and heat is critical. It must be got to the table when it is still warm and voluminous or it will quickly cool and separate.

My zabaglione was a couple of minutes past its peak, a situation exacerbated by serving it with a cold poached pear. The pear itself was watery and pretty tasteless, so the dessert was a flop. However, a quivering coconut milk pannacotta served with roasted pineapple showed that the kitchen can do much better.

Oenophiles will be in their element with the splendid all-Italian wine list and everyone will enjoy soaking up the old-school, old-Europe atmosphere. La Parmigiana is a consummately professional establishment and it feels like a treat to eat here.

© Sunday Herald

It’s hot and they’re bothered

Review published on 05/07/2010 © Sunday Herald

Eh? Somewhere between the fritto misto and the pappardelle the restaurant just filled up. One minute I’m waiting for my cousin Paul in a nearly empty room, old-school waiters with their bow-ties and waistcoats hovering, the next I look up and we’re cheek to jowl with tables of people drinking fizzy wine and enjoying themselves. On a Tuesday night, too.

The place suddenly has a buzz, transforming the slightly intimidating feeling you get when the waiters are older than you’re used to, softly spoken and come from that one-step-back-sir method of serving.

It might have been the fritto misto that distracted us. Prawns, baby squid, mussels and pieces of white fish served up in a hot, super-crisp and wafer-light batter. Delicious, and billed on the menu as being served the Italian way, which is exactly what it was. In fact I was just saying to Paul it reminded me of summer meals in the squares of the town of Termoli on the Adriatic coast. OK, I’m kidding, I wasn’t. I just pinched that pretentious style from the bumper book of restaurant reviewing to put you in the mood.

The funny thing is, though, we didn’t come here for fritto misto. Or even for saltimbocca, good though it was, being made with what tasted like a marsala wine sauce that gave the marinated veal, sage and prosciutto a good boot up the backside in the taste stakes.

We came for the pasta, which is freshly made from flour and eggs on the premises. The inky black pappardelle comes in fat strips, sleek and smooth and soft and utterly delicious, tasting so different from the dried pasta we all normally eat. It was so good that the simple seafood accompanying it was almost irrelevant.

We came too for the unevenly shaped maltagliata, served with asparagus and cherry tomato, peas and hand-hewn hunks of dark, smoky pancetta throughout. Both pastas were superb.

I’ve got this theory, you see, that you could go through your whole life without tasting freshly made pasta. Not dried, though that’s great, and not that repulsive yellow supermarket stuff either. Proper, soft, fresh pasta. I mean, who in their right mind would go through the unbelievable carry-on of mixing eggs and flour, of flattening, cutting and drying fresh stuff on a daily basis at home? They don’t even do that in Italy any more. And how many restaurants make it fresh every day in this country? One? Large numbers still can’t even be bothered cooking the dried stuff from scratch.

So yes, it probably was the pasta that distracted us, though it wasn’t all great. I would hope that La Parmigiana, this traditional old Italian that prides itself on being one of Britain’s best, would accept that the strozzapreti cooked in pizza dough with green beans and pesto was terrible. Why? Not because it was served in puff pastry rather than pizza dough, though that was bizarre, but because it was dry and bland.

I have two other minor points to make. Serving separate dishes of fried potatoes and veg with every non-pasta main course is too seventies, and if you slice the bread ages before you put it on the table it really doesn’t feel as fresh as it should.

Overall, though, the fact the restaurant filled up and we didn’t even notice proved two things. Firstly, it’s very popular. Secondly, unfashionable as it may be for waiters to be discreet and reserved, it’s a refreshing change from staff bouncing in your face, asking if you like your meal and flogging the water and wine as is so common these days.

It also gives you the chance to relax and concentrate on some very good food.