Hemingway's (
International ,
Seafood)
New operation from the well known Glasgow bon vivant, Alan Dexter. He seems to have hit the nail on the head with one!
Hemingway's, an exciting new seafood and grill restaurant and cocktail bar, is the latest venture brought to you by the team behind Barca Tapas.
Occupying the former site of Salty Dog on the second floor of Glasgow's stylish Princes Square Hemingway's specialises in contemporary fresh food and a wide range of classic cocktails.
Named after the legendary writer Ernest Hemingway, the restauarant is a homage to his great love of food and drink, especially seafood and rum-based cocktails.
The menu rotates entirely around seasonal produce, aiming to provide the freshest local seafoods, meats and vegetables in Glasgow. Organic produce is also featured regularly.
Food is served all day commencing with morning coffees, moving to a light salad lunch or a more filling main meal to be enjoyed throughout the afternoon or evening. All can be be topped of with one of our delicious range of freshly made desserts.
Night time sees Hemingway’s transform from a more casual daytime bar into a sleek cocktail bar, with a vast range of spectacular cocktails to tickle everyone’s taste buds and a charming baby grand piano to provide regular live entertainment from a number of musical genres. From those out to have a quiet romantic meal, family get-together, or for larger groups heading out to party for the night, Hemingway’s caters for all.
Manager, Jeff Currie, (formerly of well known Glasgow restaurant Rogano), and head chef John Paul Murray, (previously sous chef at the luxurious Mar Hall Hotel), bring a wealth of experience to the team, aiming to provide an excellent standard of service and expertly prepared dishes to satisfy all.
Review by Joanna Blythman at the Sunday Herald, Rating:
The location is designed for passing trade, but the restaurant alone is worth the trip
Joanna Blythman
I’m always chuffed when a restaurant turns out to be better than anticipated. On paper, I wasn’t inclined to think that Hemingway’s was going to be up to much. It has stepped into the pawprints left by the seafoody Salty Dog, whose presence in Glasgow’s Princes Square never amounted to much more than a briny whimper.
As a rule of thumb, you don’t find great restaurants in this type of location. Shopping centres charge such eye-popping rents that generally only the most commercial operations, driven by margin-obsessed accountants, can make the sums add up.
Add to that the fact most diners eat there only because they happen to be passing through. It’s an unusual sort of person who actively likes sitting in a restaurant in a half-closed shopping mall of an evening. More restaurant-savvy people will go for a self-contained restaurant that is pulling in customers on the strength of its reputation, not just because it happens to be handy.
There’s nothing original about the menu at Hemingway’s. Steak, burger, Caesar salad, grilled goat’s cheese … you’ve seen it all before. But the food turned out to be surprisingly good, thoughtful, and capably cooked, delivering the promise of the description and a good bit more.
I toyed, for instance, with the idea of smoked haddock and celeriac soup. An interesting combo that might be good, but could be downright dull. In the event, it was a winner. It was creamy but not too rich. It had a refreshing lemony edge to it, but it wasn’t too sour. The celeriac stood up to the potentially domineering flavour of the fish. Little moist flakes of fish and cubes of fried celeriac in the liquor added a pleasing contrast of textures. It even came with reasonable baguette, not the ubiquitous Europap stuff that stalks restaurant diners.
The other starter, billed as ‘crisp fillets of seabass’ was just that; fresh fish expertly fried to produce a deliciously blistered skin. It sat on an inspiring salad of marinated artichokes, sundried tomatoes, green beans and pine nuts, dressed in a piquant, herby sauce Vierge.
I ordered the sole fillets fried in sourdough breadcrumbs for my main course, knowing they were gamble. I might have got one of those greasy pub-grub jobs, but here was lovely, fleshy fish in a cleanly fried crunchy jacket, proper home-made chips – made using the right sort of floury spud – and a cracking pea-green salsa verde mayonnaise offering an explosion of fresh herb flavours, majoring on mint.
We felt duty bound to check out the carnivorous side of the menu and were well impressed by the steak. Bravely, it was a generous slice of rump, not always a cut that translates into reliably tender eating. Served rare as requested, it ate beautifully and had the flavour you find only in well-hung, mature beef. Its lip-smacking covering of butter-coloured fat suggested it came from a grass-fed animal. The menu said it came from Aberfoyle, but the breed of animal would have been interesting to know too.
The steak’s accompanying Béarnaise sauce had everything the duffer Béarnaise I mentioned last week lacked. It was a gloriously rich emulsified sauce, lent bite from an acidic reduction of wine vinegar and shallots, freshened up by the last-minute addition of chopped tarragon and chives. To hell with calorie counting. Properly made, a classic sauce like Béarnaise is the ultimate in pleasurable indulgence.
The main courses were so generously proportioned that we most certainly did not need any dessert, but our curiosity was pricked. For some bizarre reason, my dining companion felt impelled to try the five spice pannacotta with raspberries, even though she generally dislikes this Italian dessert – an indication of how the cooking at Hemingway’s had won our trust. It wobbled obligingly and its spicing was subtle. My chocolate pot was sound and enlivened by its coffee-flavoured mascarpone and home-made hazelnut shortbread biscuits.
Head chef John Paul Murray has obviously picked up a wrinkle or two from working as second chef to Jim Kerr at Mar Hall near Erskine. By clearing out some of the standard furniture from
the menu – such as smoked mackerel paté – he could make Hemingway’s more exciting still.
03 September 2006
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