Eleven Fifty Five, Glasgow: ‘Three joyously sybaritic hours have passed…’

To walk into Eleven Fifty Five at 7pm on a Friday night is to enter a portal to Glasgow itself. A portal, that is, scented with burning candles, bone marrow, blackened crusts of aged ribeye, fresh shellfish and warm wheaten bread. To the tunes of LCD Soundsystem and mid-era Goldfrapp, locals throw coiffeured heads back to slide gleaming oysters down their throats. A little rowdiness falls softly, like Glasgow rain never does, from the mezzanine where a lunch party is not-quite-yet finishing up.

Restaurants in their finest hour are distillations of the places that make them. So it is with Eleven Fifty Five, which despite being one of the city’s newest big openings can claim to be the restaurant that put Glasgow on the culinary map.

Not so long ago, and for a lifetime in restaurant years (OK, 12), it was the Gannet. The grand old bird of Finnieston. The one whose undisputed reign was a major reason why this long thoroughfare stretching from city to West End became known as Scotland’s food quarter. When the Gannet opened at 1155 Argyle Street in a derelict building that had been shuttered for years, all you could get around here was a curry, pizza and a pint. I know because I lived nearby and, for a hedonistic decade, lived on all three.

Last year the Gannet was forced to close due to flooding. Fires and floods – this is what threatens the overworked infrastructures of our grandest and most chronically underfunded cities. In Glasgow, these threats really can become biblical. The Gannet never reopened. Glasgow mourned the loss of one of its greats. But then came the resurrection. Its acclaimed Irish head chef Peter McKenna announced that he and sidekick Kevin Dow, otherwise known as the most loved maître d’ in Glasgow, would be opening a new restaurant in its place. An upscale, approachable bistro called Eleven Fifty Five. It would be Irish-ish, as so many British restaurants are these days. (Both Irish and whatever-ish.) And, also in the spirit of the times, there would be no more tasting menus.

All of which prompts an existential question. If a restaurant is in the same place, by the same team, with some of the same dishes, is it really new? The answer is yes. And no. Eleven Fifty Five has retained the modern Scottish (-ish) cooking of the Gannet (and should probably have kept the name, too – it’s hard to remember or feel real affection for a name of numbers).

What’s new are the levels of refinement, ambition and old-world glamour, from the cosy wooden snugs and walls the green of Irish tweed to the big Parisian energy. By the time we’re trowelling Kerrygold-yellow butter on to mahogany wheaten bread and milk buns speckled with onion seeds, our allegiances have shifted. My pal, Denise, was a Gannet stalwart. Eleven Fifty Five, she concedes, is “even better”.

McKenna’s Irishness is foregrounded. So, too, is his and Dow’s devotion to the fat, relaxation and elegance of those classic bistros that are probably nearly extinct in the banlieues of Paris but are alive and kicking on these blighted post- Brexit isles. Think beef tartare decorated with droplets of wasabi purée, served with roasted bone marrow popped back in the bone, to be spooned on to the coarse chop of raw fillet until it gleams like an oil painting by an Old Master. The fillet is cut from its tenderest middle, known as the barrel. It eats like butter, and is the bright magenta of my daughter’s felt tips.

McKenna is bringing in whole ribeyes from Hannan, which sources mostly from farmers in Northern Ireland, an hour from where he grew up in Monaghan. It’s a statement to transport Irish beef to the land of Aberdeen Angus, Orkney, Scotch, Highland Wagyu and the newer generation of pasture-for-life native breeds. And a great decision. My ribeye is outstanding, possessing a subtle cured flavour from ageing in Himalayan salt. It comes with a divine, and bovine, bordelaise sauce made with the trimmings, glossy with, yes, more bone marrow, and a sublime Café de Paris butter. 

Before that there were Gigha oysters – immense, creamy, sliding about in a pool of Vietnamese hot sauce. Crispy pork croquettes draped with pickled veg. Cured halibut, translucent and littered with leaves from their longterm growers in Fife. Herring, just coming into season and fully back in fashion, has been slow-brined and quick-pickled, and daubed with oyster emulsion and fronds of sweet cicely. A masterclass in showcasing the beauty and sustainability of the silver darlings of the North Sea.

Denise’s main is from tonight’s specials. John Dory cooked on the plancha with mushrooms grown in a cabinet in the derrière of the restaurant (which you can ogle en route to the toilets), and chicken butter sauce. Pure cream-drunk indulgence. Mine is the impeccable Irish ribeye with a small carafe of big leathery cinsault. Sides are stubbornly trad. Little gem doused in salad cream. Ayrshire potatoes so nostalgic in their earthy goodness Denise and Dow start going off on one about the over-boiled tatties of their childhoods.

We’re clutching our bone-marrowed bellies but still find room for a dense bar of dark chocolate spiked with fine tuiles, with very malty, naughty Guinness ice cream. Three joyously sybaritic hours have passed. In the Venn diagram where Gaelic and Gallic influences overlap, this convivial neighbourhood bistro is at its dear green heart. Eleven Fifty Five is part-Irish, part-Parisian, and pure Glasgow.

Eleven Fifty Five, 1155 Argyle Street, Glasgow G3 8TB (0141 204 2081; bistroelevenfiftyfive.com). Starters £11-£15.50; mains £22-£40; desserts £12-£15; wine from £7.50

Katherine Anne Rose