leyton.org

I’m afraid to say that yesterday was my birthday. In order to cheer me up from the gloom that the addition of another year to my tally generated, Frances and I went out for a meal in town. We’d planned to do this on Saturday past, but couldn’t get reservations. So figured the day itself would be better anyway, and booked a table at Two Fat Ladies at their Blythswood street restaurant.

First things first, this is nothing to do with the TV chefs (of which one died a few years back, and the other now seems now to have retreated to spouting countryside-alliance polemic). But with regards the restaurant, the name is supposedly a reference to their ‘88 Dumbarton road’ address. 88 being, of course, ‘two fat ladies’ in bingo call parlance.

That dealt with, Two Fat Ladies is a fish restaurant. And, if I recall from the menu I saw last night, bar the soup starter and the steak main (and of course, the sweets), everything was very much fish on the menu. Marvellous though I. I like fish. Don’t eat enough of the interesting/tasty stuff (ie. with bones). So this was a special treat. It’s also one of the rare venues to herald the fact that they use the wonderful fish caught off the west-coast of Scotland - some of Europe’s best seafood comes out of that region - but it’s very hard to find restaurants in Glasgow serving this most local, and top quality, produce.

We arrived to find the restaurant to be packed, certainly a good sign for a Monday. The pub we’d been in earlier had been next to deserted, so we had expected a half-empty restaurant too. We were met by the sight of an ominously empty table for two, right next to the door (which I tried to pull firmly shut, to little avail, to keep the cold air out). Fortunately, having reserved, we got the other table for two, that was cosily hidden away at the back. Perfect stuff.

I had the grilled sardines to start, and they were super. No chance these could ever fit in a tin either. But could have used a little more of the sauce to be honest. Frances soup went down well, although as is often the case with soup in restaurants and shops, a bit too much salt. But that’s always hard to judge. I err on the side of caution when cooking (you can’t take it out), but some cooks add shocking amounts (Watch Rick Stein some time).

For main course, I had the ‘fish platter’ which consisted of a bit of Monkfish, Bream and Lemon Sole. All wonderfully cooked, and the roasted vegetables complimented it delightfully. Frances went for the monkfish wrapped in Parma ham, a recipe I’m sure to pilfer at some point, as I’m rarely struck with ideas for Monkfish, and that seemed very simple and effective. Whilst portions seemed on the small side, the feeling of being absolutely and comprehensively stuffed afterwards put the lie to that. This was good and extremely high quality food, at a reasonable price. Sure, it’s not cheap, but it’s easily affordable. Take out my half bottle of wine, and we paid about £25 per head (excluding tip).

Service was fast, friendly and responsive. It’s not a big venue, so just two waiting staff were on, and they seemed comprehensively on top of things. Only surprise was when popping to the toilets to find myself almost walking in to the kitchen. Nice to be able to see the kitchen of course, but it did catch me somewhat by surprise.

All in all, a highly recommended venue to try in Glasgow. If a restaurant is full on a Monday evening, and fully booked on a Saturday, it’s really got to say a lot about them. We’ll be going back, that’s for sure.

• See the twofatladies.org website.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 20th, 2007 at 10:44 am and is filed under Food, Glasgow, Personal, Scotland, UK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.