Added on Thursday 31 May 2012

The West End's most famous restaurant has set the seal on a month packed with glowing reviews for local bars and restaurants by winning the Restaurant of the Year accolade for Scotland from the Good Food Guide.

It's a stunning success for the venture first launched in 1971, whose quality was first recognised by the Guide the following year - and makes the Chip the longest-serving Scottish restaurant in the definitive consumer-led publication.

Meanwhile the annual Eating and Drinking Guide published by The List has awarded dozens of glowing tributes to West End ventures as diverse as Mother India - one of its "must-visit" Indian restaurants - Partick Cross pub The Three Judges and The Flavour Company healthy sandwich shop at Kelvinbridge.

As in several previous years West End outlets dominate several categories of The List guide, accurately underlining the fact that the area has an unrivalled selection of the best restaurants, cafes, bars and takeaways in the city.

However The Ubiquitous Chip could take the area's already soaring status with discerning diners a whole step farther if it wins the UK final of the Good Food Guide event.

According to the publishers: "To qualify restaurants needed to be independently-run, offer regional or local produce where possible and deliver consistently great food and excellent service. The people's choice award is compiled from customer reviews submitted to the Good Food Guide website".

The Chip will be representing Scotland in London on June 20 at the annual Which? awards.

Owner Colin Clydesdale said of the Scottish title already gained: "It is wonderful to have won. Having been in The Good Food Guide since 1972 and to still be considered to be at the top of our game, is enormously flattering. "Running a restaurant does not get any easier, and the competition gets stronger year on year. To still be considered by our customers to be the best is amazing."

Elizabeth Carter, Consultant Editor of The Good Food Guide said: "The Ubiquitous Chip has always been in it for the long haul - it's been listed in The Good Food Guide for 40 years - and you don't achieve that without great attention to detail at all times. "So it's no surprise that readers' have again voted forcefully for this wonderfully sprawling big-city eatery."

The Black Rabbit

The last few weeks have seen apparently instant success for a bold new West End venture on the site of a formerly failed enterprise. The Black Rabbit at Kelvinbridge, small but perfectly formed, is an aspirational but laid-back bar-bistro now trading all day and night until 1am.

Part wine bar, part cafe during the day, Black Rabbit already seems to have a strong following thanks to a "smart" viral, Facebook etc campaign run by its enterprising owners, and often appears busy at a time when larger and longer-established ventures have been struggling.

With funky or ambient mood music, serene indoor decor and a smart canopied open area out front it's already emerging as a worthy addition to the increasingly exciting Kelvinbridge dining and drinking scene.

The food menu is tight but well-chosen to reflect broad local tastes, so there are numerous "quality" pizza options to choose from - for example "Parma Especial" or Hoisin Duck; and other Mediterranean standards including meatballs, ciabattas (we've tried these - recommended), and a house special "Black Rabbit Salad" which, the menu promises, doesn't actually contain any rabbit. There is a good selection of premium beers in bottles, and five wines available by the bottle or by the glass - two white, two red, and one rose - as well as some pricy Champagne for recession-proofed diners out to make a splash. Meanwhile the name choice means the venue joins a host of other animal-themed bar and restaurant names around the West End, past and present - for example the nearby Wise Monkey, the Brass Monkey (at Finnieston), The Goat, The Gazelle, Firebird and The Black Sparrow.

Can it prosper in today's cut-throat leisure market, given that it's rather small and not the cheapest place in town? I'd like to think so, because the service is excellent - cheerful and efficient - and the food is substantially above average and worth the money. The fact that it enjoys lengthy trading hours should help too - as will the cool music and soothing decor.
Welcome to Kelvinbridge, Mr Rabbit.

Tennent's goes Blonde

About 15 years after dozens of bars across the country brought in blonde wooden floors in an attempt to look like continental cafe-bars (often bearing pretentious names like "estaminet") the last real West End Victorian gin palace - Tennent's Bar - has joined the trend.

According to a reliable source at the eternally busy traditional pub the "blondeing" operation was carried out at super-fast speed so as to cause as little disruption to trading as possible ... and was timed to coincide with the launch of a new menu.

Patrons we have spoken to are enthusiastic about "the new look", particularly as it's argued this should bring to an end owning firm Mitchell and Butler's long-standing attempt to transform the bar into a posh (and consequently expensive) London-style gastro-pub.

The new menu is a tad dearer than previously, but also offers cheap standard options to woo early day trade, and appears popular with regulars. However the mainstay remains beer - unsurprisingly meaning countless lorryloads of the bar's namesake Glasgow-produced lager, but also a very wide assortment of cask ales from both sides of the border.

A typical comment about the blonde floor (and it's one very large floor, so surely worth a pretty penny) comes from a lady who prefers not to be named: "It's all the place needed," she informed me. "They should leave it alone now".

Pinata goes Italian?

The second most unlucky restaurant site in the West End (that we are aware of) appears set for a secure future as an adjunct to successful Italian venture Tony Macaroni. It's understood this chain, which also has a major share in Nardini's cafe on Byres Road, is in the throes of "doing up" the former Pinata Mexican restaurant at Partick Cross - which in a welter of previous incarnations has also been (in no special order) Pakistani Cafe, Ad Lib, North of Bondi, Gordon Yuill & Co and Betelgeuse.

Exactly what is planned hasn't been disclosed, but as new licensing rules mean the venue could operate effectively as a pub at least one possibility is a cafe-bar to complement the already busy scene at Tony Macaroni.

The most unlucky restaurant site in the West End (that we are aware of) is the site of the short-lived Karachi Cafe on Bank Street at the top of Gibson Street, which in decades past traded successfully for several years as Joe's Garage. This is a bit of a tragedy in historical terms as the place once played host to the legendary Green Gate, arguably the grand-dad of the West End's now exuberantly flourishing Indian restaurant circuit. Sic transit gloria. More recently new ventures failed to prosper, while the ownership of the premises, or its lease, were caught up in a legalistic conundrum. Now a large sign on the premises indicates they are shortly to go up for auction, possibly heralding their eventual return to use as a cafe-bar or restaurant.

Roxy Music

Back in Kelvinbridge the venue that used to be The Liquid Ship is renewing its claim to be one of the "coolest" venues around - by playing host to numerous talented up and coming young musicians. Now called The Roxy 171 the venue opened last autumn after a claimed #100,000 refurbishment with a menu of "delicious freshly-prepared, locally sourced food" and a promise to showcase plenty of good new music.

Musical memorabilia in the venue includes a signed guitar used by The Cure's front man Robert Smith - and there's a separate bar in the venue area so that drinks are ready to hand for people enjoying the gigs. But the owners are equally keen to stress the food side of things, which is aiming for a slight point of difference to nearby competitors with a Tex Mex theme - for example Mexican-style tortilla-based pizzas and snacks such as nachos with pulled pork chilli.

There's a whole host of low-priced extras diners can add to salads and cheeseboard dishes, for example dips, meats, cheese and olives, almonds, pickes and oatcakes, and - closer to home in culinary inspiration - burgers and specials like the Stornoway black pudding bap provide a hearty contrast to the Latin-inspired fare.

Manager Jamie McLean says he's keen to hear from new artists interested in performing at the events as "the venue continues to promote breakthrough artists covering all genres of music"- anyone interested should contact him at the venue.

Dowanhill Delight

We're pleased to report that the surprise closure of Partick's very long-established Dowanhill Bar proved short-lived, and the bar reopened after just a few days with a notice proclaiming "now open - under new management." At a time when so many ventures in this general area have shut up shop it's arguably a relief to find that a bar that was happily trading while the Gordon Relief Expedition was marching on Khartoum can still find a local audience in the days of cheap supermarket beer and the smoking ban.

Meanwhile at the nearby bottom of Byres Road the sadly-defunct The Chocolate Emporium (previously The Pantry) has an "under offer" sign over its door - indicating somebody is interested in having another go at some sort of food-led business on the site.

Festival Blues

A website detailing some of the key aspects of West End life past and present informs us that the Festival Parade is the highlight of the West End Festival - and goes into some detail about how marvellous this all is.

Unfortunately, 'though, it is not true. The year 2012 is the bicentenary of the Battle of Borodino, which took place during Napoleon's ultimately disastrous invasion of Russia - it's the really huge battle in "War and Peace" - but, perhaps of more strictly local relevance, it will also be the first year in which there will be No Parade in the West End ... at least not of the Mardi Gras variety.

We'll come back very shortly with a closer look at some of the bar and restaurant-led attractions during the Festival, but while there is plenty in the programme to keep the cultural tone at its previous high pitch - for example Shakespeare in the Botanics, and a chamber music extravaganza at Cottier's - the days of the massive crowds and fiesta-style Festival Sunday are gone ... along with the floats and gyrating throngs of colourful participants which invariably made front page pictures in national newspapers.

The first, highly controversial shift saw the parade move from Byres Road to become what was in effect the centrepiece of a gigantic kiddies' fun day at Kelvingrove - where, however, crowds of 70,000 dwarfed the relatively meagre entertainment laid on. Kelvin Way and the entrances to Kelvingrove Park were jammed by hordes of people, and the police frequently struggled to maintain elementary crowd control.

Now, while the arguments continue to rage in the city council over how many Orange parades should be allowed, and the resources required, Glasgow's premier people's parade has been ditched altogether.

Part of the reason appears to be a radical slimming-down of sponsorship funding, in line with recession cut-backs, which in turn means it has become difficult for even long-running major events to meet punitive costs for security. So this year there will be no obvious focus for the Festival, and no hordes of revellers crammed into West End pubs in search of (often brilliant) Fringe entertainment.

Inevitably there will still be major cultural action on offer in and around Byres Road and elsewhere - for example at Oran Mor, and in Ashton Lane and also key venues in Partick - but arguably little to tell anyone visiting the area that there's a two-week festival in progress.

Many might argue that change was needed anyway - for example deploying huge fairground ride machines in cramped streets off Byres Road (and also in Byres Road) didn't seem a great idea - but the loss of the parade, which had plenty of the brio associated with the Notting Hill Carnival, was widely lamented, and probably cannot be brought back in anything like the same form.

More on what are shaping up as the best venues and events for this year's Festival.

Jubilee frenzy

The country is in ruins, the London government has only just failed to bring in an infamous "Gregg's tax", and Boris Johnson could one day become prime minister .... but never mind, let's celebrate!

I'm referring of course to the epochal anniversary that's gripping the nation - the 60th year in which Elizabeth 2nd of England and Ist of Scotland has occupied the throne of these sceptred isles.

You've probably noticed people putting up red, white and blue bunting in your street already (although that may not be directly connected with the monarchical rapture sweeping Britain.)

Have you organised your street party yet - and have you spent royally on union jack-branded merchandise at Waitrose or M&S?

The answer to the above is probably "no, not really", because the truth - precious commodity, used only very sparingly in surviving print media - is that nobody much is celebrating the Diamond Jubilee outside Edinburgh, where that sort of thing tends to come naturally.

The displays of royal-themed goods in supermarkets are, figuratively speaking, collecting cobwebs. Nobody (give or take the odd eccentric) has bought any. But here's the licensed trade angle. Glasgow licensing board in its munificence has awarded its publicans the opportunity to open late this weekend so that citizens can raise a glass to the royals even later than they'd planned to do anyway ... and no doubt sing Rule Britannia all the way home.

All on sales premises in Glasgow can open for an extra hour this Saturday (which may not be great news for people living close to the Byres Road maelstrom), and restaurants with a 1am licence will be able to trade until 2am .... while nightclubs will be able to sell drink, ahem, until 4am.

Meanwhile although the authorities in England have advised that the law should go easy on spontaneous parties I doubt this will be taken on board by Strathclyde Police, who last year had to deploy cavalry to break up a drunken rammy in Kelvingrove Park ostensibly staged to celebrate the nuptials of (royal people) Kate and Wills.

Let's hope it all goes off peacably and quietly this time around ... for any and all events connected with historical pageants with a royal theme held over the summer.