Added on Wednesday 25 Jan 2012

Y Viva Roberto!

The really great thing about Burns Night - that annual festival of dreich uber-Scottish melancholia spliced with whisky-soaked machismo and wha's-like-us chutzpah - is that it tells us we're nearly at the end of January, the month of vicious weather, empty Teddy Bear savings banks and broken resolutions. I was reminded of the fact by a subway poster advertising some sort of tourist jape in Ayrshire, where the National Bard was born. It shows a woman with heavy eye make-up and pillarbox red lipstick with - subtle touch - a red, red rose clenched between her teeth.

She has what can only be described as a vulpine expression, and accompanying this image is an exhortation to "start your own affair with Robert Burns" or something equally intellectual.

How typical of advertising types to fasten on to Burns' well-attested fondness for "the lassies" - and of course, infuriatingly, it will probably work. But what's all this got to do with dining and drinking? Everything, of course. It's the one time in the year when our National Delicacy - haggis - is suddenly propelled to the unlikely heights of haute cuisine. Eating the stuff is practically compulsory.

And it's arguably a nice irony that the exuberant poem written by Burns about a dish concocted from leftovers to save poverty-stricken farm labourers from starvation has become the one truly Scottish food everybody has heard of. Haggis is, technically speaking, a member of the blood sausage family. It may well be padded out with oatmeal and many other things besides, but it's unquestionably a sausage.

It's served with neeps and tatties, of course, and is frequently accompanied on Burns Night by Scotch Whisky - another of Rabbie's Favourite Things. In posh restaurants it is titivated and teased into unlikely shapes, garnished with exotic herbs and passed off as a gourmet dish, while at the other end of the scale chip shops deep fry it (or something like it) and sell it to bewildered Byres Road tourists who haven't been told you can buy the real thing in Waitrose.

Disconcertingly, I recently tried the MacSween's brand vegetarian haggis, and really liked it.

Burns Night Fiesta at Stravaigin

But - and here's a shock - it turns out haggis isn't uniquely Scottish at all. To prove it, eternally adventurous West End restaurant Stravaigin is presenting three international variants of haggi (?), and is even calling them "tapas". The Gibson Street restaurant is having a Burns Night Fiesta on Wednesday, where it will serve both Spanish and Mexican haggis.

Versions of haggis from Spain and Central America will be served alongside Stravaigin's own award winning recipe as a "flight".

The flight of haggis is served in tapas sized portions with a dram of Black Bottle whisky, the brand famously blended from whisky taken from each of seven Islay distilleries. A winning combination.

The Spanish haggis, Chireta, is made from lamb, cured ham, rice, parsley, garlic and cinnamon. It is a traditional Aragonese dish, originating in the Pyrenees and has a warm, round flavour.

In Mexico, a haggis called Montalayo has been eaten for centuries. Montalayo uses ancho-guajillo chillies, onions, garlic, ginger, cumin, marjoram, and oregano, lots of black pepper, vinegar, potatoes and peas. We're told it can be bought across North Mexico and is hotter than traditional haggis.

Stravaigin's haggis, meanwhile, is made with local mutton and includes their "secret award-winning blend" of spices and herbs.

Owner Colin Clydesdale tells us: "Worldwide, haggis has a million variants. "Universally it is a humble dish of the people, with offal being far cheaper than other cuts of meat. "Scottish haggis has evolved over the generations. Ours is a family recipe honed over 40 years, a beautiful combination of age old Scottish ingredients mixed with some very exotic spices and seasonings thanks to Scotland's links with the spice trade."

However you can forget conventional neeps and tatties if haggis-ing in Stravaigin on Wednesday.

The Mexican variant is served with the famous refried beans, and a grilled torilla; the Spanish variant - Chireta - is made from lamb offal, lamb, cured ham, rice, parsley, garlic and cinnamon served with mashed sweet potato ... so there's a tatties quotient in there after all.

Haggis Pakora

Meanwhile no doubt several Indian restaurants, but perhaps particularly Mr Singh's India, will be reminding Burns fans of another "global" variant on the classic theme - haggis pakora.

I used to think this was a rather silly gimmick, and that as a fusion concept haggis doesn't really work very well with anything else at all.

However I was wrong, having sampled some of the best evocations of the genre. It's deep fried, spicy, and haggisy - how more Scottish could it possibly be? Haggis pakora is fantastic, if it's done right, and goes down extremely well with a glass of strongish but not too sweet cask ale.

For other evidence of licensed trade-related Burnsiana and Scottish folk revelry I'd suggest Oran Mor - whose celebrations began a week or more ago - or any of the area's best-known "Scottish" bars, as in Lismore, Park Bar, Snaffle Bit, Ben Nevis.

Ae Fond Pint

Which brings me neatly to the only other local Burns spectacular I've been made aware of this week, and that's the annual session in The Three Judges at Partick Cross starring the fabulous "more Corryish than the Corries" band Cruachan. Fine sentimental music, bagpipes, food, laughter and - quite possibly - a song or two from veteran licensed trade entrepreneur Tom Lawrie, are assured. If you don't have to leap out of bed at 7am the next morning and race off to some grim Permanent Place of Employment (PPE) it's a fine way to spend one of the last otherwise miserable nights of the most hideous month of the year. Antipasti no more

I couldn't believe my eyes - but it's true. The bistro which for years looked set to be a permanent fixture on Byres Road has gone, leaving nothing behind but whitewashed windows, a forlorn goodbye note from the erstwhile owners, and poignant memories for its legions of local fans.

I'm told the sister venue in Elderslie Street is still trading away, but there's now a gap in the Byres Road scene many former regular aficionados will find quite irreplaceable - in particular a couple who just always seemed to be in there every time I passed.

A while back the venue was relaunched as a Tuscan bistro, which however didn't work. It reverted to Antipasti and seemed to be ticking over quite merrily thereafter.

However cold and unforgiving January saw the plug pulled, perhaps because of the extortionate rates charged in Byres Road, and it's a moot point whether anything in the restaurant line will move in to take its place.

Absolutely Splendid

I should have been embarrassed when the charming waitress at Absolutely 161, also in Byres Road (right opposite Peckham's) volunteered to make me a full Scottish breakfast at about 1.30pm the other day - reminding me that this is what I'd ordered at a similar time of day a few months previously.

But it is the West End, after all, and of course the whole point of an all-day breakfast is that it's never really a breakfast at all.

It's a mixed grill lunch, whose ingredients just happen to correspond closely to what you might eat if you were having a set-you-up-for-the-day repast first thing in the morning.

Whereas the allegedly most important meal of the day" for me is usually a cup of instant coffee and a bit of toast.

So I chose a Panini instead, and was treated to what amounted to a very full and appetising meal of roast chicken and mozzarella with cherry tomatoes on beautiful toasted bread with a fine Mediterranean-style rocket salad - along with a cup of the cafe's excellent Danesi coffee.

While I was in there a couple at the next table - possibly Italian, I'm not sure - were talking happily and excitedly at full volume in their mellifluous mother tongue, and for a moment I wasn't really in Glasgow at all.

I was impressed by the fact the place was doing a roaring lunchtime trade in a week when most people are eking out their remaining jamjars till payday, and intrigued by owner Grant Mitchell's hints that a makeover and a change of name are on the way.

It's taken a while for this worthy member of the West End's elite collection of top cafes to get the recognition it's due - for a while people seemed mesmerised by the supposed action on the stretch between University Avenue and Great Western Road - but all the effort has been worthwhile.

University Cafe

Meanwhile another favourite port of call, the University Cafe, is still doing its own particular thing with characteristic style - excellent Bolognese to take home hot or cold, real Minestrone soup, fabulous Italian ice cream ... classic art deco interior.

Best of all it has a "long established family business" vibe very few other ventures can hope to match, and does its everyman-cafe job with consummate but modest pride.

On the hoof

A Saturday magazine review gave a rousing endorsement to Finnieston bistro Piece the other day - and although I've never set foot in the place I'm assured by a friend who knows "good places" that it's well above average with very reasonable prices.

In fact the only negative point the review really found was that these reasonable prices aren't made terribly obvious, with the result that some people might think it's too posh and dear and be put off.

The same article bemoaned the lack of quality catering vans in Glasgow, while extolling the joys of al fresco dining in London.

England's capital is apparently awash with quality vans and stands of many different kinds, answering a growing market for reasonably-priced takeaway food that isn't the usual chain shop rubbish,

The answer to the Glasgow mystery, it seems, is that the city authorities here make it extremely difficult to launch an outdoor catering proposition, and according to my well-informed catering trade informant "can't see past the idea of vans being grotty burger joints".

In fact the only "quality" van I can think of is the Crepe a Croissant one beside Sainsbury on Woodlands Road - I'm assuming it's still there, as I haven't been along there for weeks.

One of its specialities (as with the indoor CaC outlets) is a spicy tomato soup which, I'm told, makes a terrific base for home-made Mediterranean cooking. But other than that we only have - as the reviewer observed - vans selling such garbage you'd have to be drunk to eat it.

Christmas Markets

How jolly it was at Christmas-time to visit the St Enoch Square continental market and casually order a venison, wild boar, Springbok etc burger - chargrilled before your very eyes.

There was freshly-made paella at another stand, Provencal potatoes at yet another; hearty Teutonic sausages at a German stall, and quite a lot more besides.

During the rest of the year that particular piazza, which though scuzzy could easily be made quite pleasant, has an expensive cafe in the site of the architecturally magnificent former station house; a Gregg's, a fast food chicken joint, an O'Brien's and ... that's about it.

Will there ever be much more to on-the-move dining in Glasgow than steak bakes and cakes in livid primary colours? We can only live in hope.