1102 Cathcart Road, Mount Florida, Glasgow
0141 636 5858
Style: Cosy bistro
Food: Italian
Price: Three courses for around £20
Wheelchair access: Yes
When enough locals rave about a place, you've got to put it to the test yourself to see if it really does come up to scratch, or it's more a case of your friends not getting out enough. So with various endorsements ringing in our ears, Mrs G and I paid a visit to Canasta, just across from Hampden Park in Mount Florida.
The establishment comes with a long-standing reputation, and boasts of being the first Italian restaurant in Scotland, when it opened on Parliamentary Road - now the site of the Buchanan Galleries shopping centre - in 1949.
These days it occupies a fairly anonymous corner on Cathcart Road, and there's none of the standard Italiano-style decor inside. This is a place where it's the food that matters and everything else is an irrelevance.
The interior is basic, but cosy, with space for about 30 covers and a bustling open kitchen as the focal point. The photos on the wall hark back to the restaurant's origins in the city centre, when a wave of Italian immigrants brought their cuisine to this country for the first time, firmly establishing themselves in the process by capturing the hearts, and stomachs, of the Scots.
And the food in Canasta harks back to the kind of fare you're likely to be served up in the old country, with rich sauces made from scratch and an emphasis on a more varied menu than you'll find in most Scots-Italian restaurants.
We started with risso Milanese, rice balls with a crisp batter served with a sweet chilli dip, something Mrs G had been hankering after and she wasn't at all disappointed.
On the waitress's recommendation I had one of the antipasti fondues, the mini lamb and mint meatballs, served with chilli bread and a bowl of olives. This was sensational - a powerful pot of melted cheese, smothering the meatballs and allowing for much scooping with a slice of the sublime, tongue-tingling chilli bread.
If the starters were good, the main courses were even better. My smoked haddock with open ravioli in a creamy parmesan sauce was excellent, served on a roasting plate and with a selection of flavoured breads.
Mrs G's roasted monkfish spedini, or Italian kebabs, were also very good, moist chunks of fish served on a bed of rice with chorizo, cherry tomatoes and red peppers.
The menu includes classics such as pork saltimbocca as well as more intriguing options such as haggis gateau and chicken black pudding - which could be well worth returning for, judging by this visit. And with a corkage charge of £3.20, splash out on a good bottle of your own wine for a fraction of the price you'd pay for it in a restaurant elsewhere.
Perhaps I should trust my foodie friends' judgment a little sooner in future.
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