It’s an opening frenzy this week as restaurants, bars and cookery schools on both sides of the M8 fling open their doors and start heating the hotplates, pulling the pints and setting out the demo kitchens for their first customers.
In Glasgow, the long awaited Bath Street Pony has galloped up to the starting post. In previous lives, the striking, glass box-fronted premises have traded as the Tom Tom Bar, Over The Road and The Brick bar. It’s new manager promises a more food-led operation with an a la carte menu that takes its cue from New York Italian joints. Think spaghetti vongole, Mediterranean sausages with fig and rocket salad, Milano salami pizza and pannacotta with seasonal fruit.
As well as the main menu, more time-strapped lunchtime diners might want to investigate the nicely named Pony Express deli menu of soups and top notch sarnies.
Formerly, the place had quite a stripped back look but now boasts a glossy new interior which may bring New York lofts to mind. Regular comedy nights are being organised and the occasional acoustic set or jazz band is a possibility.
Today is also the first full day of trading for Cookie, the Nithsdale Road restaurant, shop, deli, cookery school and community space that we blogged about in some detail here. It looks as though it is setting out to do something completely different from any other catering business in Scotland.
On the other side of the country, Edinburgh has gone doolally with openings and changes. At the top of Broughton Street, the Picardy Place Hotel, a former G1 venue, is under new management and trading as Metropolitain bar, restaurant and hotel. Fish ‘n’ chips, burgers, club sarnies and full breakfasts are the order of the day in the swish ground floor bar. Downstairs, GHQ still seems to be happily swanning along as a popular gay bar, club and part of the G1 portfolio.
A short stroll down Broughton Street and Sejuiced juice bar has metamorphosed into the equally instructively named Hamburger Heaven. You can guess for yourselves what the mainstay of the menu might be here.
Last night saw the launch of the Edinburgh New Town Cookery School which we mentioned a couple of months back. As you might expect, many of December’s courses have a Christmas theme although the two day practical workshop covering cookery for teenagers looks different. You can bet your bottom dollar that it is rather more involved than most teenager’s cooking knowledge. They should have called the course Beyond the Pot Noodle.