We’ve covered underground restaurants a fair bit on the blog and we have also mentioned restaurants such as the Mongolian BBQs and hotpot joints where customers cook for themselves. Cookie, a proposed new venture on Glasgow’s Southside, aims to take elements of both and operate as a restaurant where guests can cook their own meal under the eye of a trained chef.
Owners Domenico del Priore and his wife Dr Melanie McCallum only got planning permission to renovate the derelict Pollokshields property last week but still hope to have it up and running next month. Scotland On Sunday covered one angle of it here by asking ‘Would you pay to cook when you eat out?’ I suspect that most people would say no unless the actual cooking was as simple and communal as it is in a hotpot restaurant or one of the Mongolian BBQs.
However, Del Priore sees Cookie as being so much more than a kitchen and chef for hire. He claims it will offer a completely new type of restaurant that he calls ‘horizontal cooking’. By focusing on seasonal food and local produce he hopes that Cookie will break down the barriers between food production, distribution, preparation and consumption. It’s a noble but very ambitious target.
‘Cookie will introduce to Scotland a completely new kind of food and drink offering,’ he says. ‘As committed exponents of horizontal cooking, the local landscape and resources will play a central role in our menu and our kitchen will be open for all to see.’
‘Cookie is a cooking club, which means that our customers can rent us out for a whole host of occasions and cook for themselves, their friends or community group. Our aim is to become a platform for local and national healthy eating programmes and an active supporter of responsible drinking and community education.
‘In addition to offering an eatery, deli and shop, we will operate as a club, bar, off license and a food and wine importer, as well as a gallery promoting design and art. Our aim is to make Cookie accessible to people of all ages, which is why we’re also keen to establish an after school club cooking school.’