Oran Mor, Glasgow - Restaurants in Glasgow | s1play.com

Bland designs

Review published on 29/06/2005 © Sunday Herald

Scotland is peppered with redundant churches that no one knows what to do with. They stand there like testaments to the nation’s near desertion of organised religion, reminders of just what a huge part it used to play in people’s lives.

You can’t help looking at those old piles of handsome carved stone and glass and wishing someone could make them habitable. The problem, of course, is that they are too big and don’t have enough light if you try to fit in new rooms and floors.

The transformation of the old Kelvinside Parish Church at the top end of Glasgow’s Byres Road into Oran Mor, arts venue, bar and restaurant(s), is reasonably successful. The innermost area is taken up with a capacious bar. I was glad not to have any time to spend there. Dark, smoky, noisy, it seemed too much of a struggle, but then I am almost bar-phobic.

The curtained-off Conservatory offers the possibility of a slightly more tranquil spot for dining, but I was heartily relieved to be eating in the more upmarket Brasserie. This is quite separate from the bar and has the feel of a Gothic, Victorian dining club with its tongue and grooved walls and intimate booths.

One of the reasons I chose to eat here was that the menu showed the hallmarks of good buying, which is always a promising start. The cheese selection comprises, for example, Pam Rodway’s carefully crafted cheese ‘Sweet Milk’ from Wester Laurenceton and one of the best truly artisanal Roqueforts you can buy – Roquefort Papillon. At Oran Mor, it is misspelt ‘Papillion’. Regular readers know that I have a tendency to pedantry, which I try to curb, but misspellings leave me wondering if more than the orthography is lacking. This thought took seed when the venison arrived: ‘Canon of venison with its own game sausage, bubble and squeak cake, glazed carrots and Grand Venuer sauce’. I guessed they meant Grand Veneur sauce, a painstakingly prepared classic French sauce for game with Russian Doll style layers of complication.

In essence you make an Escoffier-type brown sauce with veal or game, wine, vinegar, aromatics and herbs then use this as a base for added crème fraiche and either puréed berries or fruit jelly. Only a handful of Scottish chefs would be capable of preparing it successfully. Not surprisingly, the sauce turned out to be a bland non-event, a characterless brown liquid with no sign of cream or berries and no depth of flavour.

In fact the whole plateful was spectacularly tasteless. Even the venison, though pink and tender, seemed short on personality. The bubble and squeak cake was no more than a disc of mashed potato with the odd speck of cabbage through it. It was dull. The carrots tasted more simply boiled than ‘glazed’. A bowl of boiled spuds added nothing. This dish summed up one of the traditional shortcomings of Scottish food – excessive plainness. The same fault afflicted a starter of pigeon breast, and the promised pine nuts in this dish never materialised.

Lobster was chewy and overworked rather than plain, its freshness lost under a heavy cream sauce which inexplicably contained cubes of carrot and marrow, or tough courgette. Its accompanying risotto tasted as though it had been made entirely with wine, rather than wine and stock, making it too acidic. A similarly quirky, but better starter was a salad of spiky organic rocket with oranges, piquillo peppers and walnuts; an odd line-up but not unpleasant.

We tried one dessert, a passionfruit and mango ‘cage’, essentially a gelatinous mousse of the sort served in chain hotels. The serving staff are pleasant and professional, and the kitchen may have good intentions, but the cooking doesn’t justify the prices.

© Sunday Herald