Gloriosa, 1321 Argyle Street, Glasgow G3 8TL; gloriosaglasgow.com. Small plates £6-£10; large plates £16-£25; desserts £5-£14; wines from £29 a bottle
It is five years since last we saw each other, but it might as well have been yesterday. I am saying hello to an old friend and I am giving them a hug in the only way I know how: with my gob. That’s because my old friend is a wedge of the best focaccia I have ever eaten. It was the best focaccia I had ever eaten when I first tried it back in 2018 at Alchemilla, a five-minute walk away down Glasgow’s Argyle Street. It still holds the title. The crumb is both springy and chewy. The crust is crisp and golden and just lightly oiled. There is the righteous waft of rosemary and a little salt, but not too much, because Rosie Healey, who was head chef at Alchemilla and is now head chef here at Gloriosa, has a profound understanding of the word “enough”.
If this makes me sound like a chef groupie, devotedly following a great cook from one restaurant to another, then I am joyously guilty as charged. I’d wear the T-shirt if there was merch. The point to this job lies in telling you where the good things are. Right now in Glasgow the good things are at Gloriosa. Five years ago, that bread was the first sign that very good things lay ahead. So it proves tonight. Of course, there are specifics to each dish. We’ll get to them. But as ever with great restaurants, it’s down to an overarching sensibility; an understanding that the person leading the kitchen is simply sodden with good taste. Healey has a way of doing things. She uses vinegars and general acidity with care. As with that bread, she knows how to salt. She knows how to feed.
The word Alchemilla refers to plants known as Lady’s Mantle. Gloriosa continues the theme. It’s a type of climbing lily, often taken to represent fame and honour. It’s a bit grand, but hardly grandiose. Appropriately, the menu is very much vegetable-led, as befits a graduate of Yotam Ottolenghi’s kitchens. I did not look back at what I ordered the first time, preferring to be led by what politely we call appetite and, less politely, greed. Later, I note that two of my choices are roughly the same.
There are roasted cauliflower florets with the salty hit of kalamata olives, as there were before, this time in a buttery sauce with crisply fried garlicky breadcrumbs for texture. There is once more a whole globe artichoke, here generously drenched with a brilliant green chive butter, as though draped in the very essence of chlorophyll. Eating it feels like an act of self-care. The meditative process of pulling the leaves from the thistle and dragging the business end over your teeth is designed for sharing. You cannot be formal while collectively dismantling a globe artichoke. That’s the point of eating with your hands.
We have a plate of bulbous radishes, as shiny and red and promising as newly polished Christmas baubles. They are to be dredged through slumping whorls of a sharp but creamy taramasalata. Alongside is a halved boiled egg, with a jammy yolk. Chop up the yolk and add it to the tarama to smooth off its edges. The green fronds of the radish tops have been retained, but dressed sharply with vinegar. There is a disc of flatbread, smeared with an uncompromising chilli butter and then smothered by smoked aubergine, yoghurt and fresh mint. The nearest I can manage to a criticism of the cooking is that the flatbread is a little doughy. But it’s also worth noting that the plate is quickly cleared.
Five years ago, the small plates were priced at between £6 and £9. Despite every bump to basic costs in ingredients, energy and staffing since then, they still only top out at £10. There is, however, a list of four larger main course dishes. Tonnarelli, a kind of thick spaghetti, comes eagerly smothered in a cream, parmesan and hazelnut sauce with just a hint of brandy. It feels like a response to the ubiquity of cacio e pepe. It’s a welcome one. We also have dense meaty venison sausages with wilted greens and lentils and a dollop of aioli, looking a little like the smoothest of mashed potato in the gloom.
Ah yes, the gloom. The big light is very much not on here at Gloriosa. Tonight, this wide wedge of a corner space with curving walls, around which some of the curving tables have been designed, is cast in moody shadow. I don’t quite have to spark up the torch on my phone to read the menu, but nearly. The music is a little above background. I note these things because I have whinged about them often enough and to not do so now would be dishonest. Then again, it turns out that great cooking and engaged, friendly service can trump most things.
I am eating tonight with a group of food-obsessed friends and they are all absorbed by the details: the crust on that focaccia, the touch of vinegar on the radish tops. At dessert it is the simplest offering, a panna cotta, which has them cooing. It sits on the plate wobbling up at us, as if demanding attention. “She can cook, can’t she,” says one, who knows one end of a panna cotta from another, as she spoons it away. Oh yes, she really can. There is a pretty meringue with blackberries – brambles in these parts, of course – custard and cream. It’s the childish joys of dessert, given a grown-up makeover. A plum and almond clafoutis, baked to order and served hot, is not the familiar sweet take on yorkshire pudding or toad-in-the-hole, but rather fudgy, as if aspiring towards being solely frangipane. The tiny metal jug of chilled cream keeps it very happy company. We scrape happily at the terracotta.
The short wine list lurches a little vertiginously from £29 a bottle into the £40-plus bracket with only one choice in between. Perhaps take comfort in the very well mixed cocktails at £9.50 each. The bar knows how to mix a daiquiri. They also do a serious Old Fashioned. These are virtues. Argyle Street has been rich in eating options for a good few years now. It is a delight to see that, despite the ravages suffered by the restaurant sector in recent years, it’s still the place. Thank you, Rosie Healey. It was a delight to eat your focaccia again. And everything else, as it happens. I’ll try not to leave it another five years.
News bites
A London-based support group for migrant men called GIANTS, run by the migrant rights charity Praxis, has just published its own cookbook. Recipes of Life features over three dozen recipes from a diverse set of countries including China, Nigeria, Colombia, and states in the Caribbean, alongside the life stories of the 22 authors. The recipes were developed over two years as a form of group therapy. Copies can be obtained here, in return for a donation.
A Birmingham restaurant is stepping away from offering tasting menus, in pursuit of informality. Chef Kray Treadwell launched 670 grams, named after his daughter’s premature birth weight, in August of 2020, with a seven-course tasting menu priced at £70. The introduction of a Sunday lunch a la carte gave him a new perspective, he has told industry website restaurantonline.co.uk. “I realised the stuffy connotations that came with the tasting menus we were serving was having a real impact. I decided then that I wanted to introduce a more informal menu on a permanent basis.” The current menu will be dropped at the end of the year to be replaced in 2024 by a selection of small plates, including cured monkfish with date and tomato and barbecued courgettes with harissa. 670grams.com
Chef Dipna Anand, of the Brilliant in Southall, is opening a new restaurant at Unity Place, the leisure and office site in Milton Keynes. The 150-seat restaurant, launched in partnership with Restaurant Associates, will serve Punjabi and South Indian food, and will include a microbrewery from Toast Ale, which makes beer using surplus bread. unityplace.co.uk
Email Jay at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1