Eating out: Cafezique, Hyndland Street, Glasgow
[2008-5-30]
Tag: Blue Swimming Crab
Never trust a poet who can drive,” Martin Amis once wrote. “And if he can, don’t trust the poetry.” On a similar tack, it might also be advisable to take with a pinch of salt, and maybe also a dash of Tabasco, any opinion of a restaurant reviewer who resides precisely 75 paces from the establishment that they are placing under consideration.
Objectivity is that bit harder to achieve when there’s a chance, should things not go well, that the reviewer will be targeted with angry cabbages every time they pass on the way to the chemists. The ingenious revenges of miffed chefs are woven into the warp and weft of the restaurant-going tapestry, and most of them are best not dwelt upon . . .
In this spirit, then, it’s a relief to report that not only is Cafezique a superb flowering of the delicatessen format into a fully fledged restaurant, but the staff are just the sort of long-fingered, smooth-flanked specimens who might one day go on to make important contributions to neuroscience and the humanities.
Plus, there was no avoiding the task. Over the past decade or so the restaurant’s parent delicatessen, Delizique, has become one of those landmark posh-food, crook’d-pinkie institutions, Glasgow’s equivalent to the Dean & DeLuca delis in New York or Tom Conran’s various establishments in London: a hallowed, victualler of rarefied, blue-riband nibbles — sun-dried tomatoes with hallmarks, hams that were knighted in their home country and for a brief spell ran the ministry of tourism, all that sort of thing. Kirsty Wark sells the banana cake she bakes for charity here.
So Delizique becoming a restaurant is a little like Newton Mearns becoming the new base of the United Nations or Jackie Bird taking over the Letterman show, it’s a stop-the-press nugget of local need-to-know. A similar arc was traversed four years back in Edinburgh when Valvona & Crolla launched, to unanimous acclaim, their VinCaffè restaurant.
There’s been a spot of musical chairs here. What used to be the delicatessen has taken over the old grocers next door, where recreational drug paraphenalia once sat awkwardly alongside Creme Eggs and The People’s Friend. What used to be the delicatessen is now a duplex restaurant, pivoted around a sizeable central bar. The floors and some of the walls are clad in conspicuously worn parquet, salvaged from a decommissioned school gym hall; the specials are written in chalk on one of those ancient floppy roller blackboards I can recall so well from school. The rest is a high-spec architect’s showreel, contrasting with the furniture’s air of refined mismatch and casual sleekness.
The plan is to reinstitute the trade Monday here, for those whose Sundays are taken up with work or duty; the Sunday papers will be kept intact; the Cafezique week will be an artificial construct featuring a three-day weekend.
Another statement of intent is the decision to retain the old signage uncovered when a modern facade came down, the faded gilt lettering of M Hargan’s Dairy. Cafezique is committed seemingly to the old ways and verities of food, baking its own bread next door and sourcing its produce with an Ordnance Survey map.
Of course, this kind of thing costs, and Cafezique shares with its antecedent the same confident pricing, traditionally the sole criticism made of its otherwise diligent, inquisitive and discerning approach to food. The extensive selection of breakfast and brunchy things, though, are pretty much on a pricing parity with a vast slew of places without the same boffinish stringency.
So if you can stretch to it, you’re in for a series of treats. A starter of crab linguine was the sort of colourful, picturesque peasant riot more often seen on the covers of celebrity chef recipe books, alongside an unctuous beetroot soup coloured as deeply as the lining of Dracula’s coffin.
The rough rustic treatment was carried through to an exceptional main course of scallops and also to a bowl of lamb broth, the soup thin and glistening with emulsion, the meat swimming alongside rafts of heritage carrot, precisely the sort of simple but high-flying connoisseur bistro food Cafezique has set out to specialise in. It’s a wondrous, sure-footed and slightly glamorous addition to the neighbourhood, then. If you do try it, pop round to our place for a McVities Hobnob afterwards.
Never trust a poet who can drive,” Martin Amis once wrote. “And if he can, don’t trust the poetry.” On a similar tack, it might also be advisable to take with a pinch of salt, and maybe also a dash of Tabasco, any opinion of a restaurant reviewer who resides precisely 75 paces from the establishment that they are placing under consideration.
Objectivity is that bit harder to achieve when there’s a chance, should things not go well, that the reviewer will be targeted with angry cabbages every time they pass on the way to the chemists. The ingenious revenges of miffed chefs are woven into the warp and weft of the restaurant-going tapestry, and most of them are best not dwelt upon . . .
In this spirit, then, it’s a relief to report that not only is Cafezique a superb flowering of the delicatessen format into a fully fledged restaurant, but the staff are just the sort of long-fingered, smooth-flanked specimens who might one day go on to make important contributions to neuroscience and the humanities.
Plus, there was no avoiding the task. Over the past decade or so the restaurant’s parent delicatessen, Delizique, has become one of those landmark posh-food, crook’d-pinkie institutions, Glasgow’s equivalent to the Dean & DeLuca delis in New York or Tom Conran’s various establishments in London: a hallowed, victualler of rarefied, blue-riband nibbles — sun-dried tomatoes with hallmarks, hams that were knighted in their home country and for a brief spell ran the ministry of tourism, all that sort of thing. Kirsty Wark sells the banana cake she bakes for charity here.
So Delizique becoming a restaurant is a little like Newton Mearns becoming the new base of the United Nations or Jackie Bird taking over the Letterman show, it’s a stop-the-press nugget of local need-to-know. A similar arc was traversed four years back in Edinburgh when Valvona & Crolla launched, to unanimous acclaim, their VinCaffè restaurant.
There’s been a spot of musical chairs here. What used to be the delicatessen has taken over the old grocers next door, where recreational drug paraphenalia once sat awkwardly alongside Creme Eggs and The People’s Friend. What used to be the delicatessen is now a duplex restaurant, pivoted around a sizeable central bar. The floors and some of the walls are clad in conspicuously worn parquet, salvaged from a decommissioned school gym hall; the specials are written in chalk on one of those ancient floppy roller blackboards I can recall so well from school. The rest is a high-spec architect’s showreel, contrasting with the furniture’s air of refined mismatch and casual sleekness.
The plan is to reinstitute the trade Monday here, for those whose Sundays are taken up with work or duty; the Sunday papers will be kept intact; the Cafezique week will be an artificial construct featuring a three-day weekend.
Another statement of intent is the decision to retain the old signage uncovered when a modern facade came down, the faded gilt lettering of M Hargan’s Dairy. Cafezique is committed seemingly to the old ways and verities of food, baking its own bread next door and sourcing its produce with an Ordnance Survey map.
Of course, this kind of thing costs, and Cafezique shares with its antecedent the same confident pricing, traditionally the sole criticism made of its otherwise diligent, inquisitive and discerning approach to food. The extensive selection of breakfast and brunchy things, though, are pretty much on a pricing parity with a vast slew of places without the same boffinish stringency.
So if you can stretch to it, you’re in for a series of treats. A starter of crab linguine was the sort of colourful, picturesque peasant riot more often seen on the covers of celebrity chef recipe books, alongside an unctuous beetroot soup coloured as deeply as the lining of Dracula’s coffin.
The rough rustic treatment was carried through to an exceptional main course of scallops and also to a bowl of lamb broth, the soup thin and glistening with emulsion, the meat swimming alongside rafts of heritage carrot, precisely the sort of simple but high-flying connoisseur bistro food Cafezique has set out to specialise in. It’s a wondrous, sure-footed and slightly glamorous addition to the neighbourhood, then. If you do try it, pop round to our place for a McVities Hobnob afterwards.
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