My Month in Food – August

As September is starting, here is a summary of my Glasgow food highlights from August. In this post you can read about Glasgow’s new healthy lunch hot spot sprigg; a South side newcomer, Short Long Black; retro gaming bar Super Bario; as well as the pop up Bun Life in Strata and the very popular seafood restaurant, The Crabshakk in Finnieston.

Starting with the new…

Sprigg – City Centre – Breakfast & Lunch

££: Inexpensive (Coffee/Tea £2; Breakfast up to £3; Lunch up to £6). 
Good for: coffee, breakfast, lunch, healthy food.

You can find sprigg on Ingram street, occupying a compact space near the Gallery of Modern Art. They have a fantastic breakfast and lunch bar with a lot of healthy options to suit everyone’s food preference, including vegan/vegetarian diets. The breakfast bar includes a good number of toppings: a wide variety of fruit, granola, yogurts, fruit juices, seeds and more, which you can use to create your breakfast pot (£2) or bowl (£3). Lunch options are made and changed daily, but often you will see roast chicken (the honey and chipotle chicken is delicious), tuna, falafels, and an impressive number of other salad ingredients that you can use to make your own salad.

The portion sizes are very good value for money too – around £5-£6 for most lunch options. If salad isn’t your thing, sprigg also offers (sweet) baked potatoes, soups and the Freedom Bakery bread and pastries. Finally, they serve delicious The Good Coffee Cartel too which is definite bonus points! Sprigg is also fully cashless (more bonus points). All in all, sprigg only opened just over a month ago and I’m already very much in love with their food, drinks and what they are doing. They are staff are superb too, super friendly and always offer good banter. Definite recommendation when you are looking for breakfast/lunch on the go in the city centre.

Short Long Black – South side – Coffee, brunch

££: Inexpensive
Good for: Coffee, brunch, lunch.

Okay, I guess they are not that new having opened back in April, but Short Long Black are one of these hidden gems in a city where good brunching is becoming quite popular. Short Long Black have brought something different and new to the scene, which is currently crowded with hotcakes and pancake stacks (still delicious though), and change it up a little bit with a very small and focused menu, in which you will find interesting plays on the Waffle. Savoury and sweet options available, however, I have to say that the savoury waffle is one of the best thing I’ve eaten. I went for the Green Waffles, stuffed with halloumi (or you can chose bacon), while my friend opted for the courgette fritters (which also came in a waffle like shape). Both dishes were truly delicious and their coffee was as smooth as they come. This little cafe on Victoria road is definitely one to watch and it will be one I’ll be returning to hopefully frequently!

Super Bario – Merchant City – Bar, Arcade

££: Standard
Good for: Drinks, going out, games, entertainment – great for hanging out with friends!  

Super Bario is a small pub located in Merchant City which delivers big on character, fun and atmosphere. I visited on a Friday night, around 10pm, and the pub was very busy with lots of buzz around coming from tables and arcade games all around. This is a superb spot for those of us who enjoy a bit of gaming, especially retro arcade games, and a good range of drinks.

Bun Life – City Centre – Asian food/street food / pop up

££: Moderate for the portion size (2 baos per portion for £7)
Good for: sharing, quick lunch, baos 

Bun Life is a pop up residing over at Strata, incidentally, one of my least favourite restaurants in Glasgow. However, Bun Life was definitely worth another visit to the city centre based restaurant! The menu is fairly small, a choice of five or so steamed bao buns with a good selection of toppings – panko haddock, massaman beef, chicken katsu, chilli and garlic tofu and more. They also offer a small selection of sides – kimchi sweet potato fries (yum!), chicken wings, katsu fries – to name a few. Finally, if you are into your desserts, you will be delighted to know they have on offer a couple of dessert baos as well. Marshmallows in a bao? Why not! We tried the panko haddock and chicken katsu baos, accompanied by sweet potato fries and they were indeed delicious. There were flavours bursting in every bao and I really enjoyed the good selection of fillings – it was hard to choose!

The Crabshakk – Finnieston – Sea Food Restaurant

££: Moderately expensive (We paid around £40 pp, incl drinks)
Good for: seafood, fine dining

The Crabshakk already has a fantastic reputation around Glasgow. If you like seafood you will love the Crabshakk. It’s a tiny restaurant on the Argyle Street Finnieston Strip. They specialise in seafood (as the name might suggest) and with Scotland’s fantastic seafood offering they offer really good quality food and ingredients. They have a daily menu and a standard menu to chose from and fantastic variety of various local/seasonal fish and seafood. To start with, we had oysters served with shallots in vinegar and Tabasco sauce. They were probably the best oysters I’ve eaten in Scotland. We also ordered some of the starters of the day – pickled herring, salmon sashimi and tried the home cured gravadlax. The latter of those was my favourite – the salmon was delicious and the portion size was just right, compared to the sashimi which was a fairly modest serving. For main, I had the Lobster with garlic butter and chips, while my friends had a Whole brown crab and a very decent portion of Mussels Mariniere. Everything was really fresh and full of flavour. The Crabshakk is definitely worth a visit when you are after some delicious seafood.

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Look out for the September edition of “My Month In Food” at the end of the month/beginning of October!.

~Em