Reviews

Review on s1play.com

Review from the Metro Newspaper

The following are reviews taken from 5pm.com (you have to log in to see the full set of reviews!)
Hamish Paterson | 26/04/2007
" Just back from a great experience. food was fantastic. try the tuna sashumi starter.....I'd go back just for it. Lamb Shank tender and the dessert selection is to die for. It's good to see the chef out checking on the customer satisfaction. Enjoy. A cut above some of the others in it's price range. simple arty decor without being OTT. really liked the space, atmosphere and staff not mentioning the food "

Joe Dowd | 25/04/2007
" The Food and Service were first class. "

Stanislaw RABA | 21/04/2007
" excellent "

Andrew MacLean | 17/03/2007
" This was our second visit to "Guys", but we have visited the same location in various incarnations over the years. All the businesses at this address have struggled with an oddly shaped space, but the benches along the walls from the old Scottish Parliament have given a sense of solid permanence to an otherwise modern interior. The reception we received was warm and friendly, The menu was extensive and eclectic, with fois gras rubbing shoulders with "mince and tatties"! My companion began with the smoked salmon with capers, red onion and lemon, while I overtured the delights to follow with pate de fois gras. For each of us the starter set the tone for an excellent culinary experience. My companion sallied forth with the venison in orange terryaki. The fusion worked well. I enjoyed the roast lamb shank with mint jelly; more traditional but no less enjoyable. We sat with our Rioja, a reasonably priced wine, while we contemplated the puddings on offer. The choice was hard because the menu was full of favourites. In the end my companion had the bread and butter pudding while I partook of the excellent selection of Ian Mellis unpasturized cheeses. All in all it would be hard to fault the evening. One thing did rankle a bit, and it had nothing to do with the restaurant or its staff: we had to go early to another appointment so we missed the live piano music for which Guys is justly famous. "

Lisa Jane TOY | 14/03/2007
" What a pleasant discovery Guy's is! I feel I've found my Cape Cod meets Key West venue right in the centre of Glasgow. And I shall definetly go back. My friend and I are eager to return to have a go at the other delicious dishes Guy's menu offers. What a variety of cuisines and textures and flavours. For now I could eat their Pan Fried Sea Bass Fillets served on Romesco Sauce again and again and again. Likewise, the fillet steak across the table on my friends plate was stearing at me and begging to be tried, nicely cut and juicy and cooked to perfection. Loved the dainty lemon wedges on the edge of our plates, dressed in cheese-cloth in order to avoid being sprayed all over ourselves. It's the nice little touches like that that place a restaurant with outstanding food a step above the rest. Moreover, heaven for the palates of both the savoury and the sweet toothed inclined, with great selections both on the entrees and the desserts menus. Well done "Guy's" !! "

annette conley | 13/03/2007
" again , great food great service and we will be back soon "

Colette Maule | 03/03/2007
" Excellent as usual - the sea bass is the best I have ever tasted! "

Lynsey Fraser | 02/03/2007
" We really enjoyed our meal here...the food was amazing and the service was great. Makes a great place to go for a special occasion/treat. "

Airlie Brown | 26/02/2007
" Excellent food and very friendly service. "

Colette Maule | 14/02/2007
" Delicious as usual! "

Martin Drennan | 06/02/2007
" The food was superb, the service superb and a nice cosy atmosphere. The fillet steak was cooked to perfection as was my girlfriends lamb shank, which was huge. Two lovely courses, a shared dessert, a few beers and a lovely bottle of merlot for around £70. Outstanding "

MARGARET KERR | 25/01/2007
" The meal was excellent - well presented and cooked to perfection. Very good service - friendly and attentive but not overbearing. "

Colette Maule | 19/01/2007
" This is one of the best meals I have had in a long time - the flavours, the choice, the setting, the service. I will certainly be back "

Ralph Andrew | 19/01/2007
" Although the restaurant was quiet as it was early evening in the middle of the week, it had a lovely warm, friendly atmosphere. The servers were very professional and friendly and the owner even stopped past at one point to introduce himself and to say a few words about the place. There wasn't a huge choice on the 5pm/pre-theatre menu but all of the items we chose were beautifully cooked and served. It was very good value given that it was part of the 5pm January sale promotion. I will certainly be going back soon and I have recommended it to friends. "

Judy Ferguson | 08/01/2007
" On a cold wet sunday night we worried about venturing out especially to somewhere 'new' ok the've been open for 14 weeks but were new to me. We need not have worried. A warm welcome and a cosy interior was the sign of a good start and the food that followed was excellent. Mainly traditional scottish fare we pondered the menu while scoffing melba toast (!) how long is it since you've been served that- delicious if slighlty overdone. Deciding despite the night to skip the steak pie, with or without sausages, and forego the mince and tatties we opted for scotch broth, prawn cocktail and scallop & monkfish rissotto. All slipped down a treat. This was swiftly followed by Duck with fabulous orange teriyaki sauce, sea bass and veal. All cooked to perfection with generous portions and acompanied by some fine chips and mash. The crumble and eton mess completed a great meal in a nice, if quiet, setting to "

cheryl kennedy | 06/01/2007
" fantastic restauranty have been about 5 times in 2 months! very cosy and luxurious top quality friendly service and the best food ive had in glasgow inm a long tinme - best restaurant in glasgow excellent!! "

Angela Smith | 10/12/2006
" 1st time at the restaurant and the food and service was very good. Not many other diners but given the weather this was not surprising. "

Angus Montgomery | 28/11/2006
" food was absolutely excellent best risotto I've had for years, great venue with decor and service to match. great selection of wines to match moods and foods "

annette conley | 15/11/2006
" stumbled across this restaurant through 5pm. had an excellent experience, could fault nothing, will definately be returning soon, and will happily recommend to friends and family. way above anything in that vicinity, and had dined in most of them "

Scotland on Sunday, by Richard Bath | 24/02/2008
" Wise Guy Hard work and good food make this Merchant City newcomer one of Glasgow's brightest stars... YOU can't miss Guy Cowan. Short, balding and stocky, like a Glaswegian Oddjob, he patrols his eponymous restaurant each night, meeting and greeting, asking each table's verdict on his food. His visit is brief, peremptory almost, but that's the way it should be. As much as anything else, he just wants you to know he's there, that he cares. It's no surprise that he's out front each evening, taking the temperature. After all, he only moved from his cosy, alcoved North Street basement into the more rarefied atmosphere of the Merchant City in November, and it's early days yet. The prices have gone up, and there's a lot more competition here. He doesn't yet know whether his regulars have followed him across town. No wonder he's on the prowl. If the former film-set caterer was looking for a bigger stage on which to perform, he has found it here. Occupying the site that was once Arisaig and Oblomov, he has stripped the whole place back. The tongue-and-groove walls have thrown off the oppressive dark tones of their previous incarnations and are now painted in pale colours. The whole place is light and airy, from the elongated bar that occupies one half of the long thin room, to the dining area at the rear. The feeling of space is accentuated by the high ceilings, the outsized chandelier and the huge Parisian-style gilt-framed mirror that covers virtually the whole of the far end of the room. Row after row of candles add yet more atmosphere to a space that already has a determinedly fin-de-siècle ambience. White starched tablecloths complete a picture that would be at home in any smart Left Bank brasserie. The final touch is an eclectic mix of artwork that varies from garish Warhol-esque strawberry prints to an eccentric collection of bowls. Guy's would be almost perfect were it not for the music. This, I must add, is a question of personal taste; but no matter how talented they are, I have little appetite for easy-listening crooners going through their paces when I'm eating. Yet Guy's drew us in so completely that we soon forgot the music and got down to casting our eyes over one of the most extensive and diverse menus I've ever seen. Longer than my credit-card bill after Christmas, it juxtaposed some clunking choices: mince and tatties on one line, tuna and scallop sashimi on the next, veal and porcini pie on the one after that. By the time a hefty specials list was added in, there were more than 40 starters and main courses on offer. Fortunately, I liked the look of almost every one of them. I eventually plumped for the steak tartare, a dish you rarely see on Scottish menus these days, while Norman chose the burrata, a wedge of soft mozzarella wrapped in parma ham with slices of apples, sunblushed tomatoes and truffle oil. I'd chosen well. The hefty helping of finely ground raw beef meshed beautifully with the onion, spices and egg yolk, while the accompanying thin chips would probably have been the best I've ever tasted had they not been barely lukewarm. Norman, though, wasn't so happy. His burrata was too heavy on apples, too light on flavour, with too few sunblushed tomatoes to enliven the bland mozzarella. His main course more than made up for the disappointment, though. The chunky halibut fillet was superbly cooked, moist and succulent all the way through, and was smothered in a gloriously buttery and ever-so-faintly piquant Hollandaise sauce. I plumped for fish too, choosing the risotto with monkfish and scallops. It was stunning: three large scallops on top of the risotto, six huge chunks of monkfish sheltering under the rice, all of it perfectly cooked. It was just the right side of stodgy, a dish bursting with subtle undercurrents of flavour. We wound up with a pudding menu that was just short of heavenly. For anyone with a sweet tooth, the dozen options listed would make the journey worth it on their own. Actually, the only sour note of the evening came when I tried blagging a spoonful of the bread-and-butter pudding (made with panettone, brioche and amarena cherries) to accompany my superb helping of Eton mess and was humourlessly rebuffed by an unenthusiastic young waitress who spent the evening looking as if she couldn't wait to catch up on her beauty sleep. Still, you can't haveeverything. Norman rounded off his meal with a bowl of Guy's famous fruit crumble, an intoxicating ensemble of apple, mango, pineapple, cranberries, blueberries, apricots and vanilla surrounded by the sort of custard you just know you'll never manage to recreate at home no matter how hard you try. Guy may have spent his whole career pandering to A-list film folk, but now it's his turn to hog the limelight. He has proved to be a star turn. "

Scotland on Sunday by Richard Bath | 24/02/2008
" Wise Guy - Scotland on Sunday "