UBIQUITOUS Chip will celebrate 50 years of local hospitality next year. The Ashton Lane landmark’s enduring appeal is a combination of modern Scottish dishes served with flair and the atmosphere generated by a faithful bunch of bohemian customers who come here to tell stories and eat stovies.

The Chip’s strong sense of purpose took a knock with the arrival of lockdown as these familiar Glasgow scenes disappeared overnight. Now, the kitchen has reopened to provide oven-ready five course dinners with wine, available for delivery or collection.

They have also opened a “Chip Shop” selling fresh seafood, beer, cocktails and other produce to takeaway. 

Chef Colin Clydesdale was raised in restaurants – his father Ronnie opened Ubiquitous Chip, he started Stravaigin and he also has Hanoi Bike Shop on Ruthven Lane. The current crisis is the biggest business challenge his family have faced. “My first reaction was utter bewilderment. In business over the years, there’s challenges but you circumvent them, you climb over them, but this was unprecedented. We were being legislated against and there was nothing you could do about it.” 

Returning to a restaurant without people feels strange for Colin: “I’m standing in The Chip at the moment. Since we’ve closed, I’ve been in at different times of day and night to check things. It’s usually busy and full. It has almost become its own entity and the place is meant to be inhabited. To see it so forlorn, it just doesn’t compute.” 

The government route map for after lockdown outlines a return to a social setting with distancing.

So, what is the plan for Colin’s restaurants? There’s a long pause before he answers.

“We need to satisfy all the conditions that are being brought in, there’s no doubt about that. But it needs to be done sympathetically. If we end up looking like a bank teller’s counter then all the humanity and interaction goes out of it. It becomes very clinical. That’s not what restaurants are about. We need to get the balance between keeping people safe and entering back into real life again. 

“This isn’t the way things are supposed to be. I thoroughly understand why self-isolation is there but if we get used to living like this then that damages society. We are social beings! Glasgow is a social town!”

Businesses are waiting for definitive guidelines on how to reopen. “If it is people’s health that is at stake, we have to be compliant. There’s no argument there. At the same time, it has to still look like a restaurant and make people feel relaxed,” Colin says. 

In the meantime, click and collect allows customers to return and pick up some of their favourite dishes and Colin is enjoying being back in the kitchen. 

“The flipside to all of this is that the shellfish that used to go to Paris and Madrid is still in Scotland. So we have access to the best, most beautiful langoustines in the world. We’ve been selling them and getting rave reviews from customers. The produce that has been coming in has been absolutely phenomenal. 

“We’ve had our charming French forager in this morning with a pile of pheasant backed mushrooms she had picked off a load of trees.” 

Colin is looking at reopening Stravaigin in the next couple of weeks but he says it’s like starting things from scratch. 

He doesn’t underestimate how tough the next few months will be. “This industry is hugely resilient. It’s bloody hard making restaurants work. Most restaurants fail in the first couple of years. 

“All the places in Glasgow that we know and love have bucked the trend and through force of will have survived. 

“We are trying our best, everyone is, but to save hospitality there needs to be that bit of leeway. Give us a chance and the industry will rise to it.”

For the full story on local foodand drink order the Glasgow’s 100 Best Restaurants book at glasgowist.com/100Best.