Smith’s of Uddingston scored a double whammy at the recent Scottish Restaurant Awards when they scooped not just the Best Urban Restaurant gong but also the Restaurant of the Year award.

The judging panel praised the restaurant for its ‘delicious, well-presented food, served with pride and pitched at a reasonable price which meant that the normally picky judges could find no fault with it at all. It is a hidden gem that people will return to time and again’.

You can see what the Smith’s team had to say about their success backstage at the awards and if you want to book in then there are a couple of sample menus on their 5pm page here.

The 5pm blog also caught up chef patron Michael Smith to talk about his career, his restaurant, the impact of the awards and the strange case of the eggless omelette.

How do you feel about winning not one but two awards?

MS: We were blown away with it. It was fantastic.

Has it had an effect on business?

MS: The phone has never stopped since the morning after we won the awards. We were busy beforehand but we’re even busier now. Lunches are filling up. Even on Monday night we were turning tables over twice. It’s great.

We only have 40 seats so there are only so many people we can take but the number of customers coming through the door has doubled. Our covers are up a 100%.

Are you attracting customers from further away than before?

MS: We already had a following which we had retained from a restaurant that we had in Candleriggs a few years ago. We also had people who were regulars from all over Lanarkshire. Since we won the award, people have been coming in from Fife and Edinburgh.

Why do you think you customers keep coming back?

MS: I think it’s the value we offer. They get good food at prices which are value for money. I think that you should be able to get good food without having to pay through the nose for it.

I worked in France for a wee while and I go there a lot for holidays. I’m always amazed by the number of great wee restaurants you can find in small, unknown villages. The food is great and you are not getting ripped off. It’s better than some of the Michelin star stuff. It is good quality, home cooking. I like to think that we offer something very similar. We make everything ourselves. We make our own bread, sauces desserts. We don’t buy any of that stuff in.

When did you start in the industry?

MS: I left school at fifteen, started working in restaurants in Glasgow and fell in love with it. Over the years, I worked in various places and then I taught chefs at Motherwell College for thirteen years. In 1999, I opened Smith’s on a site in Candleriggs, Glasgow and then I opened here in Uddingston in 2005. At one point, I was running two restaurants at the same time and didn’t enjoy it one little bit. We closed Glasgow in 2007 and have concentrated on Uddingston ever since.

Has cheffing enabled you to travel a lot?

MS: We did a lot of student exchanges when I was teaching so I worked in Canada, Berlin, Raffles in Singapore. If you want to travel then being a chef is a good way to do it.

When I was teaching I used to always say to my students that wherever you go in the world as a chef, you will always get something to eat and a roof over your head. A carrot in Australia is exactly the same as a carrot here. You know what to do with it. Get yourselves out there and get a job.

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What’s your favourite ingredient to work with?

MS: I couldn’t live without olive oil and that goes for home as well. I put it in everything. To be honest, everything is my favourite ingredient. I just love food. The restaurant is full of pictures of food markets from my holidays. My wife is always on to me when we get back from holiday saying that there are no people in our photographs. And I’m saying, ‘True but look at those tomatoes!’

What gets you out of bed in the morning as a chef?

MS: I love everything to do with food. I just love the buzz. I used to play in a band. I was going to be a pop star. I’m not but being a chef is the nearest you get to being on stage. Every night is a buzz. There’s the build-up and then the audience arrive and you put your show on and then at the end of the night, you get a real sense of achievement.

And your daftest customer complaint?

MS: I had someone who asked me to make them an omelette but with no eggs. That stumped me.[“>][6]

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