Review: Fallachan Kitchen, Glasgow

My meal at Fallachan Kitchen was without a doubt, one of the most surreal and memorable meals of the many hundreds of reviews I’ve done over the past 25 years. The food was also borderline incredible, and we’ll come onto that in due course, but if I’m honest it wasn’t the epic menu that will linger longest in my mind.

What really marks out the Fallachan Kitchen experience is the format. For a start, the restaurant, which is the brainchild of well -travelled private chef and caterer Craig Grozier, is in a railway arch down a dead-end street in Finnieston near the Clydeside Distillery. You step in off the street and most of the metal-lined space is devoted to what is clearly a working, semi-industrial kitchen. All, that is, except for a large rustic wooden dining table which seats 12.

By the time we arrived for a set menu that started being served to all 12 diners at 7pm, the other ten seats had already been occupied by five couples. One pair consisted of two chatty tourists from Boston, while the others were an older couple from Washington DC, a pair of delightful and heavily tattooed young rock fans from Glasgow’s West End who had been given vouchers as a present, a fourth duo of lovely yet stylish designers from Stirlingshire and finally an extraordinarily noisy pair of uber-extroverts who turned out to be a brother and sister that, judging by her three-legged triskelion tattoo, were from the Isle of Man.

This was an impromptu dinner party of the sort you rarely get. Sure, there’s Eorna and The Table in Edinburgh, where you sit alongside random fellow diners, but in both cases the main event is the chef talking you through what he’s cooking. Meals like this, where strangers sit at galley tables, tend to be the preserve of blue-blood communities such as ancient Oxbridge colleges, the old money American ski resort of Alta, the golfing mecca of Muirfield and the dining room at Hogwarts. The only commercial restaurant where I can remember sitting at a table with multiple other diners was at The Gardener’s Cottage, where a pair of Slovakian punks revelled in ruining the first date of two quiet young accountants. I don’t know whether the number crunchers are still together, but the restaurant is now a fond but distant memory.

So I approached this set-up at Fallachan Kitchen with some trepidation. I needn’t have worried. Everyone, except for the unfeasibly noisy Manx nutters, who were at the end of the table and thankfully not within chatting distance, was relentlessly lovely and entertaining. But to say that the chat was eclectic doesn’t do it justice. One minute I was talking obscure drams with Mr Boston or dissecting the Trumpian nightmare with Mrs Boston, the next Mr Washington soliloquyed about fly-fishing and opined about volcanic geology before well-heeled Mrs Washington engaged me on what she assumed was the safe topic of football with comic effect (‘our friend has bought a soccer team so we went along to see what all the fuss is about. Have you ever heard of The Hibs?’). Rock chick eulogised about a recent gig by Hebridean punk-folk trio Peat & Diesel and the designers evangelised about the culinary merits of Millport and the bordello-esque delights of staying at The House of Gods. At times the volume was like a 747 taking off. My head span.

There was, however, one thing we all had in common: we were all devoted foodies who had temporarily migrated to the vibrant community that the blurb told us is ‘one of Glasgow’s up and coming spots’ because we had heard great things about the fare being turned out by Grozier and his team.

A Dingwall native, over the past 26 years he has travelled extensively, with spells in Tuscany and Japan proving particularly important in his culinary journey. So, too, is the way in which he has structured his business. Basically, Grozier and his team spend most of their week doing high-end catering, which gives them licence to indulge their every whim when it comes to the menu on offer at Fallachan Kitchen. After the meal was over, I spent half an hour chatting to Grozier about food and it quickly became an extraordinary descent down a foodie rabbit hole as the self-confessed geek talked about the amazingly intricate and steps involved in every dish. One moment we were discussing the scientific theory behind some seemingly random pairings, the next he was explaining how the age-old techniques he picked up in Tuscany and Japan had come into play.

Nor was it just about Grozier’s wishes. His tight-knit team all forage, and all have input into the construction of the menu, with sommelier Conor McGeady working with Grozier to fashion a wine list and drinks menu which was one of the more interesting ones I’ve seen recently.

I won’t give a dish-by-dish rundown of the menu because it could fill the internet, but suffice to say that there were some dishes of real excellence. I loved the pig’s head canape with smoked pike, perch roe and rosehip, for instance, while the langoustine broth was rich and percussive, and the home-made mozzarella with nettle, bergamot, asparagus and olive oil was gorgeously light.

But the thing that I sticks most vividly in my mind was the blackened sourdough made with super-peaty Bruichladdich Octomore whisky, which came with umami-packed butter made from the whisky wash. Not only was the concept revolutionary and fearsomely difficult to pull off, it was delivered with aplomb.

So, if you want to have a quiet chat with your beloved over dinner, or need to schmooze your boss in a style-over-substance parlour, the format means Fallachan Kitchen is not for you. But if you want brave, on-the-edge cuisine that engages your brain as much as your taste buds, to be consumed in company that’s the equivalent of a lucky dip, then you know where to go.

Dinner £120 per person, wine pairing £100, non-alcoholic drinks pairing £40. Mandatory service charge 10%. Open Wed-Sat 7-11.30, and for lunch 12.30-4 Fri & Sat. www.fallachankitchen.co.uk. Arch 15, 8 Eastvale Place, Glasgow G3 8QG.

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