YOU'D have to laugh, or you'd cry, hence the fixed grin on my face as I write this.
The Little Urban Achievers Club with its covetable location on a prime corner of Glasgow's Great Western Road has reincarnated itself as the Crafty Pig ... a burger joint. My, oh my, there's an original idea if ever I heard one. Mind you, what's that freshly painted logo peeping out on the gable end a few doors up the road? Oh yes, that's the new BRGR, Scotland's proconsul for the eponymous burger chain.
The momentum behind the movement to thrust yet another dripping, meat-filled bap into Glasgow's ever-receptive maw only continues. In fact when BRGR opened, it was even giving away free "patties", while donating the proceeds to a cancer charity. Do I sense a rising note of anxiety, some slowly dawning awareness that, in financial analysts' language, Glasgow's burger market is approaching saturation?
How does the Crafty Pig differentiate itself on the existing overheated burger scene? It has a smoke pit, apparently. It has ribs, brisket, pulled meat pizzas, wings. "When an upmarket neighbourhood bar meets its dive bar 'bit on the side', the result is going to be interesting" the Crafty Pig promises. Interesting? With its pool table, murky light, and crate-like rough wood, it evokes the mood of a redneck bar in the depressed rural American south. In fact, it reminds me of the bar in the recent film, Joe, where Nicholas Cage does daily battle with gun-toting, score-settling, good ol' boys, a stage set for one of those De Niro-esque "You lookin' at me?" brawls.
Actually, I'm sure the Crafty Pig is a thoroughly friendly place; the only fight that's likely to kick off is me throwing a fit, spraying "No more burgers in Glasgow!" and "Burger off!" in ketchup on the walls. Instead, I'm deep-breathing, and attempting to adopt the air of a detached anthropologist struggling to interpret the significance of Glasgow's fixation with US eating rituals. Is this the Clyde's answer to cargo cults? Can we expect regular stars and stripes hoisting ceremonies? The erection of a mini-Mount Rushmore as a sacred mountain shrine?
Cut to the chase: the Crafty Pig brings nothing to the table that breathes life into the city's jaded, wrung-out, strung-out Americana scene. Our meal was so bad that although the table was filled with food, most of it was still there when it was cleared.
Where the Crafty Pig seeks to stand out from the pack, it goes woefully wrong. The meat element in the smoke stack, hickory-smoked beef burger, was passable, if cooked to the dry standards of an environmental health officer with a temperature probe, the bun workaday, but the innovative additions - a weird fried dill pickle and a smoked Islay Whisky barbecue sauce - assaulted the tastebuds with their take-no-prisoners acetic acid attack. Food comes either on greaseproof paper in a plastic receptacle, faithful to the worst "in a basket" traditions of US fast food, or in enamel mugs that could double up as tooth mugs in a trailer park. The main offerings include a mound of hopelessly impotent, flaccid chips. You pay £3 extra for the privilege of sampling Alabama fire fries, which taste as though a warehouse full of ground spices had been dumped upon them. And that'll be the same again, thanks, for a corrosive "North Carolina apple and vinegar slaw", fit for cleaning up coinage or stripping enamel.
Memphis spare ribs (pork not beef: blame the Crafty Pig for that substitution), tasted saltier than sea water, and their "dry rub" another explosion of unintelligently used, sledgehammer spicing. Any meat flavour in a brisket bun was obliterated by its "pitt" [sic] gravy and BBQ sauce. Did someone drop Colman's mustard powder in a pint to make the West GPA beer mustard?
Doughnuts for dessert? I couldn't stand it, so decamped to Cottonrake bakery over the road. What a blessed relief.
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