THE first listing that comes up when you do a web search for Hutchesons describes it as a “refined venue with high ceilings and potted palms, for cocktails and all-day steak and seafood menu”, a thumbnail sketch that could equally apply to your typical chain restaurant that’s taken over the old bank, library, whatever. But refined, now that epithet, in its purest sense, truly befits this impressive mercantile building in Glasgow’s handsome Merchant City. It’s got the lot – three floors of soaring Georgian proportions, architectural detailing and style – yet nothing fuddy-duddy. The lay-out in the main dining room is simple, zoned into more intimate areas using long banquettes topped with brass rails and orb-shaped lamps. Pendant globe lights hang like low-slung moons. It echoes the fin-de-siecle through to Art Deco mood of famous Parisian and Manhattan brasseries, while avoiding any heritage pastiche. We arrive to the sound of Cuban music. Refined Hutchesons most certainly is, but straight it is not. I can’t think of another restaurant in Glasgow that gives you that spacious, calm sense of occasion, luxury and style. Even if the food at Hutchesons were mediocre, I’d go there anyway, but the fact that it’s on a par with its environment is a wonderful bonus.
An appetite-stoking, smoky, lemony waft precedes a starter of smoked haddock espuma. Cupped by an elegant, marbled stoneware bowl, this mouth-filling nectar is so much more than fancy foam. It seems to owe its dreamy texture and heft to smooth potato. Three other elements – the fish, lemon, and snipped chives – build its exquisite aroma. Tap the perfect poached egg and it disgorges its yolk into the soul-gladdening mass. Crisped pancetta lardons create a textural counterpoint to the mousse-like consistency. Our other starter is cleverly treated, a split bone with melting marrow, which tastes like the best beef dripping, topped with mildly ascetic pickled chanterelles and little minarets of pungent mushroom aioli. My only gripe is that I could easily also eat the other half of the bone. As it stands, the oily, chargrilled sourdough toast out-bulks the bone marrow.
Cauliflower “steak” rarebit intrigues me. Instead of the customary toast, we’ve got a thick slice through the cauliflower, roasted, topped first with an emollient onion jam, then the bubbling, strongly cheesy, slightly spicy rarebit, bubbling up, suitably blackened. It’s flanked by hard-fried, waxy potatoes, and mixed with softly cooked, pliant pink shallots, and capers. Monkfish roasted on the bone is the other main course, a sturdy chunk, measuring around four inches long and an inch and a half high. This fish is immaculately cooked, crustily seared, and bathed in brown butter with parsley and capers. And Hutchesons’ chips are in a league of their own; apparently they are first steamed, then blanched, and finally fried. Restaurant dishes rarely include enough vegetables for my taste but often I’ll hesitate before ordering side dishes because of the price. But here’s £4 worth of tomatoes well spent: a generous plateful of ripe, red specimens, served at room temperature, with lashings of top-notch extra virgin olive oil, and a good seasoning of rock salt. This kitchen seems to understand that tomatoes, almost always supplied under-ripe, need to be ripened and generally curated.
Desserts at Hutchesons are pretty predictable – it’s a classical sort of place, with a fairly classic menu – and once again, each element is ably executed. So the chocolate offering consists of a square of dark chocolate mousse on a crunchy, possibly praline base, topped with a thin, even layer of gleaming, satiny-smooth ganache, flanked by caramelised popcorn brittle, peanut butter ice cream that’s not too sweet, and a daringly brittle chocolate brandy snap-type wafer. And then there’s an individual lemon cheesecake that tastes as if it has just been made, served with its penetratingly zingy lime sorbet. How many limes were zested to get this intensity of perfume, I wonder?
The front of house staff who serve us are efficient and unobtrusive; no patter, they just do the job, in a restaurant that honours its unique space with fine food.
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