Stravaigin, Glasgow

Many years ago, I lived in a chaotic house on Otago Street, with bust-up cars in the garden and a landlady who stored butter and lino cuttings in the garden and, my flatmate swore, walked backwards. The urge to escape to Stravaigin, literally on my doorstep, for their ginormous fish and chips and a pint of the best-kept Deuchars in the city was irresistible. However, despite my loyalty to their pub staples, I’d yet to experience their full-blown restaurant menu.

We settled in to a comfy corner table in their just-the-right-side-of-dimly-lit basement restaurant, nestling underneath the typically heaving pub. Here I happily tucked in to firm and sweet smoked eel, backed up in a summery fashion by a crunchy green apple and slivered almond salad soaked in reisling - boozy and sprightly in the same mouthful. My other half’s starter was more of the season, a hearty slab of duck and chanterelle terrine with a nicely salty sauce gribiche.

Mains for me was a pheasant, doing the noble thing and sacrificing itself as a last-minute replacement for the advertised pigeon. Excitingly, the one item that nearly made me avoid ordering the dish was the one that held it all together- big but subtle chunks of liquorish carrots heroically destroyed all my memories of gagging on Allsorts. My missus’ bouillabaisse brimmed over with Scottish seafood - we counted mullet, clams and mussels, all huddled under the watchful eyes of a whole langoustine.

Pudding seemed avoidable until we saw the menu and promptly cracked. Nectarine was again slightly more of a sunshine dish than the howling winds on Gibson Street would suggest appropriate - sweetly fruity, but slightly swamping its accompanying miniature jelly. The real star was raspberry roly poly with carnation milk ice cream; the stuff of the school canteen, but I can guarantee your dinner ladies never made it like this. Proper, crusty suet pudding rolled around unashamedly sugary jam and set off with a pearly white frozen milk. This is cheeky credit crunch food, 1950s-style.

If you can bear to drag yourself away from the suppers and bevies upstairs, you’ll be richly rewarded for the journey.