Cail Bruich

Among Glasgow’s most attentive dining experiences, where seasonality, exceptional sourcing and attention to detail create a winning formula.

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At Cail Bruich, great attention is paid to little details – the poise of the staff, the refinement of the décor, or the elegance of the introductory snacks. Those might include treats like Crowdie and salmon, encased in toasty buckwheat, or a preposterously full-on beef fat doughnut with cabbage and tongue. The smoked butter that accompanies the bread is legendary. Ingredients are foraged, others grown in their garden. In the kitchen there’s a swagger to proceedings, and an embrace of seasonality and big flavours: fattiness of partridge offset against pear, foie gras adding richness and balance. It’s good. But better is Goosnargh duck – robust breast, and leg meat that’s slow-cooked, juicy, pulled off the bone then artfully shaped into a terrine. Cubes of rhubarb jelly bring wintry sweetness and truly elevate things. Elsewhere, plates of mackerel, stone bass and skate wing show a more delicate side. On to some suitably luxurious desserts: chocolate torte is bitter, blunt and thoroughly grown-up, while a soufflé will rise, magnificently, then ooze with Yorkshire rhubarb, and proceedings close with the same assuredness with which they began.

• High point: The wine matching and the sommelier
• Low point: Various menus and options are a bit confusing
• Notable dish: Goosnargh duck, rhubarb, salsify, cabbage

Listed in the Glasgow Larder – order a print copy (free + p&p).