Our plan was to go for a lunch, visit Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallerty for a bit of culture and then go to Chinese supermarket to buy some Japanese ingredients for dinner.
We had different options to go for lunch and eventually decided to try Ox and Finch (http://www.oxandfinch.com) at 920 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow G3 7TF. I first heard of this place from having read the review by Marina O'Loughlin on The Guardian last October (http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/oct/17/ox-and-finch-glasgow-restaurant-review-marina-oloughlin) and have been intrigued about this place but not have got around to try this place until now. Because of its name, Ox and Finch, I thought this must be more meat-focused place but actually it is not necessarily so. This place caters for all taste, they even have a separate vegetarian menu too. There are so many tapas places nowadays and you feel like you are getting the same kind of food everywhere, so just think of a bit up-market tapas place with comtemporary feel, a sort of place you could imagine the West End of Glasgow would have.
It's not cheap (if you think of the concept of tapas for sharing) but the food is fantastic, everything taste fresh with great ingredients. We love this place. We can't wait to go back to this place again and it's not often we say things like this about a restaurant.
We checked the reviews on Tripadvisor beforehand. Everyone is giving great reviews. I did not want to raise my expectation too high as I often get disappointed by it. We did not book tables and were not sure if we could even get it. The place opens at noon so we tried to be there around that time, hoping that we could get seated. We parked just outside of Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery. We were lucky to get perfect parking space on Kelvin Way and walked for a few blocks on Sauchiehall Street toward the city centre direction. And here it is, sitting at the corner, we found Ox and Finch.
It did not look too busy so we went in. We were told that no tables were available for another an hour or two but the manager came up and asked if we would not mind sitting at counter tables. Of course not, we don't want to miss this chance. Actually it's not a bad place at all to sit as we could see the kitchen and chefs are in action, and on my left was the wall full of wines, great!
The waiting staff came over with menus and suggested that we try 2 - 3 dishes per person.
We checked the menu and decided to try four dishes of Buffalo Mozzarella, Fig, Mint and Eight-year-aged Balsamic from the vegetarian menu, Crab and Crayfish with Chilli, Mango and Glass Noodle Salad, Sea Bream, Shredded Thai Salad, Chilli and Peanuts and Salt and Pepper Squid, Blood Orange, Chilli and Saffron Aioli.
We also ordered Sourdough Bread with Extra Virgin Olive Oil dipping to nibble whilst waiting for the dishes to arrive. The bread was really lovely and soft and E.V.O.O. was really good too.
As Emily was driving, I could also order a small glass of sauvignon blanc to go with dishes, hee hee hee.
We were quite lucky as the place was not too busy yet and our orders arrived one by one but fairly quickly so we did not wait too long.
First arrived was crab and crayfish salad. This was our favourite. It was really tasty, really refreshing. We tried to dissect what was in this salad so that we could recreate this at home. There are obviously crab meat, crayfish, roasted chopped peanuts, glass noodles (or Vermicelli Noodles?), chopped spring onion, bean sprouts, red and orange peppers, carrots, chilli, fish sauce and lime and coriander. That's all we figured out so far. Emily thought there might be some lemonglass too.
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| Crab and Crayfish with Glass Noodles - really really yummy! |
Next arrived was Mozzarella with grilled figs and 8 year aged balsamic vinegar. We never tried figs before so we were delighted to try this. Mozzarella was really soft and almost melt in your mouth and figs were really tasty too. 8 year aged balsamic vinegar .... wow, it sounds delectable already even if we could not tell the difference between 8 year aged one and M&S's one.
Salt and peppered squid and sea bream followed. To be honest, I did not find salt and peppered squid was particularly special although it was still a good dish - personally I would like to have more blood orange segments.
Sea Bream was really good too, with Thai peanuts salad.
We enjoyed everything. Our favourite is Crab and Crayfish Glass Noodle salad.
Just as well we only ordered four dishes to share between us (and sourdough bread). We managed to scoff everything except one bit of fried squid tentacles. By that time we were too full to try desserts. Well, we just need to come back again to try them next time.
We then ordered coffees to finish off our meal. My macchiatto was excellent.
Whilst having coffees, us 'ladies do lunches' also posted some picture from this restaurant on Instagram. We decided to go to Kelvingrove Museum for a bit of culture after this and thought of having some tea with desserts later on. Emily treated me for this lovely lunch. Thank you very much, Emily. It was really really fab! We would love to go back but next time we need to make sure we book in advance. Whilst we were eating, quite a many people came and could not get in. We were really lucky that we could get in. I have just found out on the web that this is a restaurant by Jonathan MacDonald who was a former head chef with the McLaren formula one racing team and apparently you would need to book a month in advance if you want to eat there on a Saturday night! Wow, I can't wait that long, I want to eat it there now!
It was a fabulaous dining experience. We also had a fabulous time at Kelvingrove Museum too, which I shall talk about another day.
That's all forks!
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