The Botany Bar and Restaurant

Glasgow

TODAY’S special is half-roast chicken and chips and there are plates of it already pinging furiously out the kitchen as we await ours and stretch back for some unexpected nature watching. The restaurant part of The Botany here is a spacey and giant glass cube bolted onto the back of what looks like an old Maryhill Pub. It sits high enough above a little bit of urban greenery outside that three hyperactive squirrels bouncing up and down in plain view and burying conkers in the grass, are completely unaware they’re being watched.

Every few seconds they stand bolt upright, paws waving the air like Meerkats in that advert, before reassuring each other, nah, we’re just just imagining it. For a few moments anyway it beats the iPhones for entertainment.

Joking aside there are few more relaxing ways to spend a Sunday afternoon than sitting in here amidst bleached veneers, potted trees (well, one), as enthusiastic waiting staff nip about and families sit at big round tables chatting.

According to the internet The Botany is apparently going to be the next big foodie thing in the west end of the West End. Of course, the Number One Rule of Restaurant Reviewing is never believe the internet blurb. And if you consider the menu blurb then this old place – recently taken over and renamed – has somehow, in a generally unspecified fashion, been inspired by the Botanic Gardens somewhere down there near Byres Road. Indeed, a fresh ingredient-driven menu is apparently the vision.

Thankfully the Second Rule of Restaurant Reviewing is never believe the menu blurb. Let's be frank: who doesn’t claim fresh food and ingredients nowadays.

Scanning the menu, we immediately struggle to order something non-generic and middle market from amongst crab linguine (£13.95), monkfish curry (£15.50), salmon, rib eyes, fish and chips, and something called Balmoral Pie. This combines chicken, haggis and black pudding under, I suspect anyway, a layer of puff pastry and not an actual pie. If it was any different they’d say wouldn’t they?

I ask the waitress if the pressed duck – which is a prune and sloe gin terrine in serrano ham – is made here and she nips off to the kitchen to ask. No, is the honest answer and so we end up choosing starters of cajun jackfruit tacos (this may be the Botanic Gardens inspiration) and sweet corn fritters over that and haggis bon-bons, tempura veg or hummus.

For my main course I order The Botany’s all-day breakfast with steak when it’s offered to us as a daily special. Fast-forward to the end here and I can tell you that I’ll be caught in the uncomfortable spotlight of a hardly touched plate with a waitress trying to tractor beam the truth out of me on why I haven’t eaten more.

Embarrassingly, I’ll simply squeak: I’m just full. But we’ll both know that this breakfast with its flabby bacon, pale sausages and unattractively oily black and fruit puddings is the result of a pan nowhere near hot enough and a pretty careless attitude in the kitchen. Disappointingly so, because actually the bacon and sausages seem of good quality.

If it’s a downer then so is the half-roast chicken which may be what it says on the tin but comes with chips that have been sitting out just a few minutes too long, wilting rocket and a little more of that slapdash feel.

All, however, is not completely lost. Without making any fuss about it the waitress will actually take most of the price of that breakfast off the bill. Without being asked. Thereby showing how good service can save (some of) the day.

The Botany then? Nothing on the menu to give the place the slightest bit of individual character in an already crowded market, but very good service and it’s a comfortable place to be.

The Botany Bar and Restaurant

795 Maryhill Road

Glasgow

0141 946 3131

Menu: Pastas, salmon, chicken, a Monkfish curry and probably a cuddly toy. Trying to be all things to everybody. 3/5

Service: Excellent waiting staff saved the day by giving an unprompted discount on unfinished food. 5/5

Atmosphere: Pleasant, atmospheric glass cube in bleached woods, overlooking mini-urban wooded area. Nice. 5/5

Price: Maryhill location and West End prices. 3/5

Food: Fine as a neighbourhood drop in, but hard to see how the lack of imagination could make it a draw from further afield. 5/10

21/30