Lunch at Arisaig in Glasgow

My older daughter Emily is very good at finding deals and is always lucky. In fact she is also the sort of person who wins something often if she buys lottery, scratch cards or enter into prize draws. Not a huge win but she is happy with small wins and feels content. Good luck always seems to follow her and she has a good karma.

So she received an additional discount from an on-line website for discount restaurant vouchers. She phoned me and asked if we want to try Arisaig Bar & Restaurant (http://arisaigrestaurant.co.uk) in Merchant Square, Glasgow. The name of the restaurant seems to come from  a small village in the West Coast of Scotland of the same name and serves Scottish food. We checked their menu on website, which sounded nice and booked a table for 2. The online deal was for £9.95 per person for 2 course meal with a glass of wine and Emily had additional discount to put toward this, so definitely a good deal.  We booked a table for 4 for Sunday lunch the other day for Emily, her boyfriend Craig, my husband and me. The restaurant does 2 course lunch menu anyway but the choices of menus between our online deal and their lunch menu are almost the same.

My husband and I arrived at the restaurant, which is inside of the lovely indoor courtyard of the Merchant Square building. A pub across the other side of the courtyard was showing Andy Murray playing against Novak Djokovic at Grand Slam final on a big screen. Emily and Craig were late so we were watching this.  By the time we found out that Andy Murray lost, we were seated at the table, studying the menu. Emily was driving and she nearly hit a car or a car nearly hit her car as she was trying to park. Being so stressed and running out of time they had to take her car to an expensive multi-story car park to park, despite it was Sunday and free on-street parking in the city centre. She normally has good karma but she did not have car-ma on that day!

For starters, Craig who loves haggis ordered Haggis Fritters with onion gravy. Unfortunately he had some mouth ulcer and could not eat much of this dish, shame....

Haggis Fritters with Onion Gravy

Emily had Smoked Brie & Red Onion Tart served with roast tomato and balsamic vinegar dressing. I tried the bit of the tart, which did have smokey flavour.

Smoked Brie & Red Onion Tart

My husband and I had Homemade Fishcakes served with green leaves and tartar sauce, which was nice.

Homemade Fishcakes

For main course, my husband had Breaded Haddock with chips and tartar sauce. It would come with mushy peas but he asked the restaurant to serve without it. Chips were really chunky and big.

Breaded Haddock with Chips minus mushy peas

I tried Vegetarian Bean Burger with salad, chips and spicy fruit slaw from the normal lunch menu. I found the burger (made of mixed beans and vegetables) was rather dry so I put fruit slaw and onion chutney (?) that came on the plate onto the burger to give some softer texture and flavour. Ciabatta roll was nice. Again it came with big chunky chips. I just wanted to try something different, otherwise I would have had salmon from the menu, but I was happy with my choice as we eat salmon at home quite often anyway.

Vegetarian Bean Burger with chips and spicy fruit slaw

Craig ordered Haggis & Clapshot with mustard cream sauce. It looked really nice but again unfortunately he could hardly finish it because of his mouth ulcer. Shame...

Haggis & Clapshot with mustard cream sauce.

Emily had Shetland Mussels tossed in a cider and smoked cheese sauce. It would come with smoked bacon in the sauce but she asked it to be without. The restaurant had no problem accommodating her request. There were a lot of big mussels. I tried one and was very nice and so as the sauce.

Shetland Mussels with cider and smoked cheese sauce

Overall we did have a nice lunch and good value for money. I also thought service was good and attentive. I think it would have much more lovely and lively atmosphere at night, with lots of restaurants within the courtyard being busy and filled with many diners. We saw Italian and Spanish tapas restaurants in the courtyard. Perhaps we would look out for other on-line deals to see if we could go there too.  ..... You probably notice by now that we would not have eaten out this often had we not used all these on-line deals....

That's all forks!

p.s.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention. The restaurant passed my toilet check. My husband jokingly suggests I do a blog for toilet checks but I said no.... who want to see pictures of food along with pictures of toilets!  No thanks, I say.  But seriously, I would be weary of eating anything at a restaurant that can't even pay attention to cleanliness of toilets.... would you agree?