I had a juicy, seasoned rump steak in here a couple of weeks ago.
One of those sudden whim meals on the way home after a long, dry and dusty day at the office. I'll come back I thought then, and see what the rest of the menu is like.
So here I am on a Monday night. On the way home again, this time from chanter lessons. These Luca and I both enjoy hugely though I merely sit on the couch and read a book and occasionally chuckle while he wrestles with the goose, as the baby bagpipes are known, sometimes making sounds like a calf being strangled while Robbie Wallace, one of the world's great teachers , and great players I should add, raises a wry but patient eyebrow and says things I don't understand about grace notes and dots.
"Ooh, dirty Luca. That note's dirty...clean, yes, clean, Good boy." The McMillan Signature Cullen skink then seems highly appropriate for tea after tonight's sterling graft on Scot's Wha Hae. As the chilli squid arrives I'm teasing Luca about how big a cut of his profits he'll have to give his old man when I send him up the Royal Mile one day to play for the tourists. We dive in, but the first spoonful of Cullen Skink delivers a big chunk of hard onion in what tastes like plain watery cream, the second a chunk of potato and so it continues as the conversation moves onto whether there's actually any smoked haddock in here at all. Or even a flavour of it amongst supremely bland potatoey creaminess. Hmm.
To the squid then, large oblongs dusted in flour, but it's rubbery given the size of the chunks and when they say chilli squid on the menu it turns out what they actually mean is squid-with-a-single-raw-chilli-sliced-and-tossed-on-the-plate. And it's oily too.
Nobody is expecting Michelin standards here, just simple dishes done well, but they're certainly charging plenty for these dreadful generic starters. Never mind, I say, the steaks, like the Campbells, are a-coming. Though the longer I do this job the more I realise there's a Monday night meal in some restaurants, and a Tuesday night meal and often the only decent ones are the Friday night meals, yet there's never Monday night prices on the a la cartes menus and I'm getting that grim Monday night feeling right now. It's not dead in here. The booths along the front wall are pretty busy. We're sitting in the back area of this cavernous restaurant with its red upholstery and American veneers. There's a large open hatch to the kitchen, but all it reveals is sterile plating up.
Last week in Spain we watched as Argentinian steaks (the Angus steaks cost more - though less than it does in Scotland curiously) were cooked on a grill glowing with charcoal. Bit of theatre does no harm.
Bit of information about provenance does real good. "Our beef is hand picked, hung and aged on the bone for 30 days," says the menu giving no other real clue as to what we're paying for. Anyone can go to Lidl or any supermarket nowadays and get a 28-day-steak and they'll actually say what kind of cow it came from and where.
OK, what are the steaks like? Disappointing. The rib-eye, unseasoned, is pretty tasteless apart from a not-entirely-pleasant searing flavour from a pattern of grill marks.
The rump, asked for medium rare but delivered totally rare is nothing like the one I had last time. There are some very poor and completely unseasoned Daupinoise potatoes on the side, some fatty lamb chops and characterless pork chop with the mixed grill. A good venison sausage though.
An apple crumble to follow may be made here, as the waitress claimed, but if so they have accidentally exactly replicated what crumble from a packet tastes like. Oh dear.
The McMillan Southside
862 Pollokshaws Road,
Glasgow,
0141 649 9055
Menu: It's a steak house with a few chicken supremes, pastas and other such dishes on the menu. As expected. 3
Atmosphere: Large, comfortable, nicely fitted out with booths and to be congratulated for turning an empty eyesore into somewhere attractive. 4
Service: Pleasant and fairly helpful on an otherwise slow Monday night. 3
Price: £6.50 for a poor Cullen Skink, £7 for a poor chilli squid, generic steaks aren't in the bargain category either but when are they in this country? 2
Food: Had a reasonably good steak in here a few weeks ago, had a terrible Monday night meal tonight. Inconsistency still a huge problem for middle market restaurants. 5
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