Two Fat Ladies - The Shandon Bells, Glasgow, Scotland

My husband and I went to Two Fat Ladies - The Shandon Belles (http://twofatladiesrestaurant.com/shandonbelles) in Glasgow last night for dinner. It was actually an on-line voucher deal of two courses and a glass of proscecco each for £21 for two people.... £10.50 per person, which is a very good deal.

The restaurant is located within the residential area, the other side of M8 Motorway from Hilton Hotel in Glasgow. Our booking was 6pm and we arrived a little bit early so we decided to go in anyway to have a drink at the bar.

We walked in and mentioned our booking, only to be told that we were at the wrong restaurant. It was not at The Buttery (this is the posher one) but we should go to the Shandon Belles, which is downstairs with the entrance at the side of the building. The website describes the latter as 'quality cooking at affordable prices'.

I have been to the Buttery for business dinner as a group; that was a long long long time ago, well long before the restaurant became being part of Two Fat Ladies. I remember waiting staff solemnly carried our main course to our table - each plate was covered with silver dorm/bell shaped food cover called cloche (meaning "bell" in French) to keep the food warm.  I remember there were 6 of us sitting around the table and there were 6 waiting staff. When all our plates were placed in front of us, then all 6 waiting staff ceremoniously lifted the cloches simultaneously to reveal our food. I used to love that almost theatrical but somewhat OTT experience. That was the Buttery then.

Anyway,  back to the other restaurant for quality cooking at affordable prices. We quickly exited the front door to go around the building and found another entrance for the Shandon Belles.

According to their website, the Shandon Belles is their bistro with a quirky and cosy atmosphere where you will feel right at home, serving simple, honest and well cooked fresh food at great prices.

Well, it does look cosy and has relaxing atmosphere......

Our proscecco arrived!  We sipped this whilst perusing the menu to decide what we would have.

We then had wonderful bread whilst waiting for our food to arrive. It was a lovely bread. My husband thought it was a tomato bread and reminded me that I do have new bread maker which has been sitting somewhere in the house collecting dust and that perhaps it could bake a wonderful tomato bread like this.

Anyway, back to the food. For starter, my husband ordered 'whole grilled sardines, garlic butter and mixed leaves'.  It does sound good and it did look fab!  He did enjoy this.

I wanted to try something vegetarian for starter so I ordered 'chargrilled polenta with pesto marinated beetroot'. Beetroot was really tasty. Polenta was fine - I just don't get polenta in general .... however I still enjoyed the starter.

For main course, we had an option of selecting fillet of Shetland salmon, grilled fillet of coley or fish special of the day with £2.00 supplement, unless we go for a vegetarian option of butternut squash and pea risotto.

Two Fat Ladies are good at fish so we got to order fish. Since we are here, we both decided to order fish special of the day, which was sea bream. All served with roasted vegetables and potatoes.

The fish was lovely, perfectly cooked. We both really enjoyed the fish.

After two courses, surprisingly we still had some room for dessert! So my husband had 'Shandon Belles' Cheesecake with mint sauce'.  I tried the cheesecake a little bit - it was delicious and cheesecake was lovely and light.

I had 'dark chocolate and strawberry roulade with chocolate sauce'.  This was delicious too with lots of chocolate sauce.

After that we both ordered black coffees that came with 'Julie's tablet'.  Julie's tablets were big and quite sugary so just as well I ordered a black coffee which is very rare thing for me to do. Coffee came in lovely tea cups, which I liked.  I enjoyed the coffee too.

 

Yes, as usual, I did toilet check and it passed my check. The toilet was immaculately clean, which I like, with a picture of mermaids on the wall. There was a basket of white hand towels to wipe your hands instead of industrial paper towels. I kinda like this ... it's rather homely ....

We had a lovely dinner. Well, the voucher was £21 plus £6 for 1/2 bottle of wine, £2 x 2 = £4 for sea bream supplement, £3 x 2 = £6 for dessert and £2 x 2 = £4 for coffees, total £41 plus 2 glasses of proscecco. No bad.

As we came out of the restaurant, we had a quick look at the pre-theatre menu at the Buttery. They do 2 courses for £16.95 and 3 courses for £19.95.  Maybe we shall come back and try the Buttery. I doubt they do 'cloche' thing anymore though ...

We decided to go to Malmaison for a drink en route to the train station to go home. Malmaison is not too far so we decided to walk.

We found a walkway that goes across the M8 motorway toward the centre of Glasgow.

 It was also 'Super Moon' last night. I tried to capture the picture of full moon ...

In the meantime, the other side of the world in Japan, my sister was also trying to capture super moon from the veranda of her house.  I think she did a great job taking this photo!

Super Moon - photo by Mariko

I feel so far away to Japan, yet at the same time feel close too as after all we are all under the same sky....  This reminds me of Japanese tradition of 'Otsukimi' literally meaning moon-watching to honour the autumn moon and eat Tsukimi dango or rice dumpling to celebrate the beauty of the moon.  I wonder if my sister and her husband had the dumpling whilst admiring the super moon ....

That's all forks.