HERE’S the thing…if you’ve spent every single week of every single year since you were slim eating in a different restaurant you start to notice something. And it’s this. There are still a staggering number of restaurants serving exactly the same food, at exactly the same prices, sourced from exactly the same freezer food suppliers, cooked in exactly the same way, by exactly the same pool of chefs, who move from restaurant to restaurant.
Only the decor ever changes. And the themes. Ho-hum.
And here’s the other thing. When someone comes along and does something that involves more than simply unwrapping and heating it seems interesting, even exciting. Take tiny Bakery 47 on Glasgow’s Victoria Road. It’s awkward, uncomfortable, has distinctly odd opening hours, a serving system that involves a lot of aimless milling around and it isn’t exactly cheap. But the food, straight from their oven? Wow. No wonder they still queue.
Paesano on Glasgow’s Millar Street, has the off-the-shelf designer disease, and it’s not even owned by Italians, but they use real wood-fired ovens, with real Neapolitan chefs hand-making real floppy Neapolitan pizzas. At pretty much real Neapolitan prices.
At Inver in Strachur, in Argyll, not only is the designer budget thankfully zero, (who needs one with what’s outside?), but no freezer food truck has surely ever made the trip to them over the Rest And Be Thankful. Local sourcing is from the loch outside and even the trees out back – though using pine needles was surely one of their rare bad ideas – and the food zings and bubbles.
Today, the truly awful meal is largely a thing of the distant past. In fact I only had one real stinker this year. At a chain called Thaikhun in Silverburn shopping centre.
Thirty years ago a kitchen may have been a place to hide out from booze problems, skin diseases, arrest warrants or to feed major psychological disorders. No longer. Now chefs are good, basic standards are pretty high, it’s just boldness, flair and creativity that’s missing. But who has the time in Scotland to go and find fresh and new products from our non-existent local markets every day?
Salisbury on Glasgow’s south side makes a reasonable stab at it with changing seafood dishes and organic vegetables from the Locavore guys next door. On the other side of the city, 111 by Nico may be a bit heavy on the cult of the chef, but the value of the modern British fine dining is phenomenal.
Ox and Finch and The Gannet remain the jewels in Glasgow’s sparkling Finnieston strip of restaurants, but they’re only staying ahead by constantly refreshing menus. The whole area is now so static isn’t it time for the city council to seed a new area with low rates and other incentives?
If 2015 has been hardly a stunning year at the top end of the market given Scotland lost three Michelin-starred restaurants and gained only one – though Edinburgh still hugely dominates the Michelin and fine dining sector.
It’s not been a great 12 months at the bottom end of the market. True, this is the year the burger died but there are still about 15 burger restaurants for every bearded 21-year-old on Planet Food.
The ideal that sparked the burger explosion – freshly ground meat, properly sourced ingredients, buns that may have been recently baked, pride in the product – seems as dead as a very dead thing.
If there are still restaurants pursuing it their beardy little chins have long been ground into the mud by the stampede towards the £5 burger served in a freshly defrosted nappy bun.
And the chains march on: Bills, Thaikhun, Carluccios, yadayada. The list is endless. They may well get their materials from industrial suppliers, but they’re different industrial suppliers to the locals and the illusion of change still fuels the market.
This year may have been a great year for new restaurants, there are loads of them, but it’s not been a good year for new standards. More small restaurants please next year. Less chains. Fingers crossed.
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