Brunch Club Ross McDonald and Greig Hutcheson had worked together in restaurants including Brian Maule at Le Chardon d’Or and One Devonshire Gardens for almost twenty years before opening the doors at their first solo venture, Partick Duck Club, in 2017.
With a stylish, bijou dining room, cheery atmosphere and a straightforward approach to cooking Scottish produce, it quickly became exactly the type of comfortable neighbourhood spot you would like to have at the end of your street.
The focus is on quality comfort food. “We always felt this was the type of food we like to eat but it had never really been given the right treatment,” Ross says.
“We thought that if some familiar dishes were given a bit of love then that would strike a chord with a lot of people.”
Some local history: There was a tavern known as the bunhouse on Old Dumbarton Road beside the River Kelvin that was popular with a group of Glasgow merchants, bankers and professors in the 1820s. They would walk out to Partick from the city each Saturday to dine on roasted duck, washed down with local ale. They formed a social club in 1810, the Duck Club of Partick.
Ross and Greig used this tale as the starting point for their menu, although things really began to take shape when they started to talk about chips. “We never wanted to be a concept restaurant but the duck element was going to run through the dishes. We wanted to have the best chips in Glasgow, and the duck fat fries were a huge thing from the start,” Ross explains.
This place is part of the Glasgow breakfast club, a broad sweep of neighbourhood hangouts that have revitalised the concept of brunch. See also Morning Glory on Great Western Road, The Hyndland Café, Ocho and Café Strange Brew where chef Laurie MacMillan has made breakfast into an artform.
Where does this burgeoning trend come from? “What we see is that people now treat brunch as a special occasion. They will be celebrating birthdays and anniversaries at brunch rather than dinner. During the day we get tables of six or more. It’s informal, fun and you can involve all age groups of the family, from babies to grandparents.”
partickduckclub.co.uk
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