West on the Corner
160 Woodlands Road
Glasgow
0141 332 0540
SO the Jager Schnitzel arrives and instantly silences chat about Jamie Oliver's newish Dog House at Gatwick where yesterday I'd had a good smoked hot dog in a toasted bun with a light cheese sauce and little crispy parmesan crumbs amid dirty tables, rude staff and the utter stink of stale beer.
For a moment there's complete silence. Tick, tock, tick, tock, as we stare down the barrel of two thickish, palish pork escalopes tottering precariously on a mountain of chips, creamy mushroom sauce slithering slowly down the slope. The escalopes stare insolently back.
"That's very off-putting" says Gordon referring, I suspect, to the sheer vulgarity of the portion size. "But...where's the breadcrumbs?" says I, having been expecting, not unreasonably I think, a thin, beaten escalope encased in crispy breadcrumb rather than two stark naked bits of meat.
Around us in this bar cum restaurant which is, I think anyway, fabulously and spaciously designed in clean, pale greys, with rich wooden floors, the exterior all lovely faux-unrestored gold signs and artfully scraped paint, life buzzes away.
"A lot of money spent on the look," I said as we had walked in earlier to a warm wall of hubbuby chat before whispering "and the place is packed with celebrities, too". To which Gordon replies: "Aye me." He's kidding. I think.
Apart from him, anyway, there's Baroness Helen Liddell over there, who I'm reminded was once High Commissioner to Australia. And isn't that the The Herald's diarist Ken Smith out with his nephew? I spot at least one former Miss Scotland, too. Crikey.
I like the feel of this place with its low open windows onto Glasgow's Woodlands Road. It is owned by the city's West Brewery and it feels bang on the money, what with breweries and food currently being as hot as hell.
Indeed, on Saturday there I was eating Vercellese-style panissa and fassone steaks at the Menebrea brewery restaurant in Bielle in northern Italy but that's another story.
Tonight, we ask for a booth in the restaurant and the smiley waitress obliges, seating us beside the window where people wandering up Woodlands Road gawp in at this new venture as though it appeared in the last 30 seconds. I ponder whether etiquette dictates whether my exponentially expanding waistline would be better placed above or below the table line.
Food? Hot smoked and flaked salmon in a potato salad with lemon is all crumbly potatoes, tangy dressing, with plenty of good salmon. It's enough to feed two. A haddock fish cake is uniformly round on a too-large white plate, though it's pleasantly potatoey and the West curry sauce is authentically German with that tangy, ketchuppy flavour the Germans love.
There's steak pie, burger and rib-steak on the menu, but have they missed a trick by not going down the road of importing German bar food specials. How do we know this stuff doesn't come from the back of a freezer van?
Hey, ho. The Currywurst is a very faintly, almost imperceptibly, smoked bockwurst, with salad and very good, crisp chips and more of that curry sauce. It's fine.
And that unfortunate Jager Schnitzel? Bland, pretty tasteless chewy pork. Beating it thin would have tenderised it. Coating it in breadcrumbs would have squared with what we expected from the menu. What are they thinking of?
We venture desserts and a Veinnese apple strudel is a bit over-fired and its look and taste leaves us wondering if it was made here. There's an ordinary and not very Black Foresty fondant, all gooey chocolate.
As meals go, I can't fault the value if volume is your thing. And, hey, nobody's expecting stunningly different food in a what is really a beer palace. But this is ordinary.
Is it yet another victim of the Glasgow disease? No expense spared on the decor, no expense incurred in the kitchen. People expect more nowadays.
Menu: Faintly German themed selection of bar food including schnitzels, sausages, sauerkraut and spatzles. Too faint, too themed, very lazy. 2/5
Atmosphere: Lovely twinkling corner bar and restaurant with fabulous exterior and clean crisp interior that was buzzing along nicely. 5/5
Price: Heroic, Germanic size portions at very reasonable prices, with starters around the fiver mark and mains to be had from a tenner up. 4/10
Service: Pleasant and friendly female waiting staff don't have far to go from the open kitchen. No complaints. 5/5
Food: Schnitzel that wasn't beaten, breadcrumbed or even nice, sausage that tasted freezer van generic and bland. Portions huge but poor overall. 3/10
19/30
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