review a restaurant
fo' shizzle, as they say

evening .. sitting at Queen Street on a train that smells of cheap junk food (cheers, adjacent bloke), waiting til 8pm on the dot when it heads back east ... been working (sic) at The Agency today, earning actual money catering to bank executives who have a shakier grasp of language than alan partridge on a peculiarly unselfconscious literary jag ... maroon blazers would not diminish them, with the liberal application of phrases such as "hurt the opposition" they shall not fade

actually hung on for a bit after work to check out a restaurant ... not done any xxxxxxxxxx.xx.xx reviewing for months and since they pay £20 a go (no expenses) i opted for subsidised tea at a new seafood place in princes square, the upmarket shopping mall de nos jours in scotland's great urban centre

to give it its due, it aims at an ethical fish policy and has titled itself the Striped Bass ... it's on the second floor with concourse tables which means several seats are splendidly vertiginous, overlooking the two-and-a-half storey drop down to the floor below - the interior of the restaurant is simply trendy ...

short wine list, simple menu, a few specials ... devilled mackerel starter came with salad where the overwhelming taste of dressing virtually disguised the fish (which was itself insufficiently devilled) ... white wine (moulin de gassac) was fine ... the background mall music ranges from the eagles to pink floyd and back again ("we don't need no education", plaintive harmonica as coke fiends from 1970s california essayed Doollin' Dalton, "easy money, faithless women, red eye whisky ... for the pain")

the phone call to the place earlier in the afternoon had set the tone i think

"oh hi, what time do you start serving this evening please?"
"last oarders iz at nine"
"no, what time do you *start* serving?"
"wiz opan aw day"
"ah right [how the fuck was i supposed to know] so do you do a pre-theatre menu?"
"therz a day menu, then the dinner menu cums oan at six"
"ah right, thanks"

yeah, i'm snobbish, whatever, but one would expect Glasgow's latest ethical seafood eaterie to employ waitresses who can answer basic phone enquiries without sounding bored and supercilious ... (she was actually from Hampshire)

there was a specials board (scallops, Loch Fyne oysters, smoked haddock rarebit) but a simple sturdy main course seemed best: smoked haddock fishcake with a wee fillet of sustainable farmed sea bass atop ... with some salad on top of that .. with more of the same fucking ridiculous salad dressing that was handicapping the starter ... and the special Striped Bass side salad had (oh yesh) yet more lashings of dressing that seemed like a collision between mayo and creme fraiche with added pungency (and oil) ...

given the fishcake was the cheap main course (5p shy of £11), Striped Bass provided an 'added value solution' with champagne and caviar sauce, puddled round the fishcake like the jewelled effluvium of jabba the hutt ... ah, okay, that was unfair .. it was just a cheap way to look posh

[cue for a PhD on the social norms of glasgow and its post-industrial proles, aspirational but lacking assurance, grasping at prestige like a business banking executive desperate for a telling phrase reaching for the word 'deliverables' - all in comparison to edinburgh with its generations of financial, legal and governmental smugness well capable of ordering the organic venison with jus and not breaking stride in a sentence about this year's invite from the queen to holyrood week ... in aberdeen of course the comparable couple would be indoors, on the second bottle of white port, wondering how it had all come to this, occasionally wanking in front of a webcam in liaison with a portly lady from baton rouge]

ah yes, but the food conclusion - Striped Bass is the Pizza Express of fish. Demotic, reasonable in its own way, unexciting, dependable, and drowned in dressing ... Sometimes it's what you need; it's hardly ever what you want ... it will go like a fair until it stops then Glaswegians will turn to something else

meanwhile, don't order the salad

x

starter plus main course, glass of sparkling mineral water, two glasses of white wine: £25.30

i just noticed they forgot to charge for the second glass of wine so it should have been £30.05

the PIN machine didn't prompt me for a tip and i didn't have cash; i am a bad man
( writerblock ... embedding disabled by request on, Mon 31 Mar 2008, 22:00, 2 replies, latest was 17 years ago)

What I can't work out
is if you're being serious or taking the piss. Its a rather disjointed post, and that's where part of my confusion comes from. So...are you taking the piss so I can laugh or being serious so I know never to eat in Glasgow? (should I ever go there)
(Teran Thinks Pogonophobia is funny, Tue 1 Apr 2008, 15:12, Reply)

I love Edinburgh
Hate glasgow.

Don't mind Aberdeen.

Love John O'Groats
( whenanimalsattackhumans clad in global hypercolour, Thu 3 Apr 2008, 14:39, Reply)