Here are this week's most talked-about restaurants in Glasgow, in our weekly restaurant power rankings.
1 Vega (Up One)
A bar, restaurant and bowling alley with views from the seventh floor of Yotel Glasgow beside Central Station. Expect casual dining with sharing platters, small plates and bar snack to go alongside boozy shakes and cocktails. There will be a limited opening from 19 July with the venue fully open from 28 July.
vegaglasgow.com
2 The Duke’s Umbrella (Up Six)
Glasgow’s latest gastropub is a smash hit with chef John Molloy unveiling a series of innovative dishes to go alongside a creative cocktail menu. Go for charcoal grilled langoustines, slow braised ox cheek and seasonal pies. Order the Guinness panna cotta for dessert.
Dukesumbrella.com
3 Moskito (Up Four)
A reinvented bar and restaurant on Bath Street. Look for the Japanese fried chicken with hot honey and salt caramel, dry aged Scottish beef served with Peruvian spices and avocado, Isle of Mull oysters and well fired tiger prawns with harissa. Special mention for the katsu chicken sandwich which brings a great combination of flavours.
moskitoglasgow.com
4 The Gannet (New Entry)
Peter McKenna takes things up a notch as this Finnieston favourite returns with an impressive new tasting menu. The line caught mackerel dish with seaweed and horseradish is outstanding. After being closed for much of the last year, the team are back with a renewed sense of purpose.
Thegannetgla.com
5 The Luchador
This South American influenced bar is the latest addition to the food scene on Pollokshaws Road. Enjoy breakfast tacos or spicy egg dishes in the morning with tortillas, chilli and chorizo on the menu in the evening to go with your agave cocktail.
Theluchador.co.uk
James
James have not played together on stage since September 2019, one of the longest periods the band have not been in front of an audience across the last four decades. Founding member Jim Glennie says a return to live music will bring the band closer to what they are as musicians, “you miss the buzz, the excitement, the relationship with the fans”. Drummer and violinist Saul Davies says it’s not really a decision to return to gigs, “it’s just what we do”. In the meantime, the band have released All The Colours of You, their sixteenth studio album this summer ahead of their return to the festival circuit.
Both Jim and Saul now live in the highlands, close to Ullapool. They separately found themselves making a connection with the landscape and the sense community, choosing to base themselves in Scotland when not on tour.
Saul says, “Jim and I are probably typical of the kind of people that end up in the highlands – someone from somewhere else that falls in love with it, has huge respect for the place and want to put down roots.”
Jim says, “My dad was born in Scotland but I feel Mancunian and always will do. I love Scotland, I have a lot of friends here and that’s why I made the move. I spent most of my life in central Manchester, and it can be the loneliest place in the world, you can be there surrounded by a million people and feel completely and utterly isolated, and here, you've got physical isolation but people reach out if you want. They aren’t knocking on your door all the time but there is a huge sense of community and I feel incredibly fortunate to have that.”
James will appear at Playground Festival on Friday 24 September.
playgroundfestival.co.uk
wearejames.com
Inhaler
Irish band Inhaler’s first single releases started a synth-pop wave that carried them to their first international tour, propelled by 50 million online streams. Singer Elijah Hewson was given some advice when they reached Japan. “Our tour manager had been there a couple of times with different bands over the years. He said, "don't be worried if the crowd are really quiet. They're just being respectful, they'll clap for two seconds and the they'll stop. We went out and to be fair to the crowd, they were all having it and it was a big response. It was absolutely mind-blowing to see that effect your music can have that far away from home.”
Tour managers often offer different advice about the response you will receive from a Scottish audience but the band have already experienced that. “We ended the UK leg of our last tour in Glasgow at SWG3, it was one of our favourite shows” Elijah says “it was all the fans our own age up the front and singing back our words, it doesn’t matter where we are in the world, the fact we can see that at any of our shows is crazy for us.
Elijah was born into Dublin music, the son of Bono and Ali Hewson. It was after meeting his bandmates guitarist Josh Jenkinson, bassist Robert Keating and drummer Ryan McMahon at school that he found his voice, as the band bonded over different genres, writing songs round each other’s houses.
“Two of the singles from our first album, Cheer Up Baby and It Won't Always Be Like This, they were both written when we were 16 and 17 so right at the beginnings of the band. And they’ve just stuck with us, they're two of the poppiest songs on the record. We've played Cheer Up Baby at every gig we've ever played” Robert explains.
Their momentum has been interrupted but now Inhaler are ready to reacquaint themselves with Scottish crowds, starting with TRNSMT on Friday 10 September, before returning a month later for a headline gig at Glasgow Barrowland on 10 October.
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