Sylvan, Glasgow: ‘A blueprint for the kind of vegetarian restaurant we need more of’

It’s no secret that vegetarian dining has evolved since my childhood in the 1990s. In those days, I was the Knowledge of London’s wholefood cafés – less because I actually wanted to eat in them and but more because my parents went in for the kind of dense bread that could, if necessary, double up as a weapon. In my early years, I spent many a lunchtime in a café where dreamcatchers dangled in the window, my own dreams – of golden arches and french fries – left unrealised…

Still, I became a vegetarian by choice and by the millennium I’d embraced the socks-and-sandals food my mother loved – if not the socks and sandals themselves. I’d make teenage pilgrimages to Covent Garden to buy shoes from Shellys on Neal Street, where I remember getting a pair of faux-suede platform trainer boots with toggle fastenings before hitting up the late vegetarian institution Food for Thought, diagonally opposite the Birkenstock shop. (An aside on footwear: in those days of school uniform, shoes offered one of the very few opportunities for fashun, hence walking on laces tucked uncomfortably into my Kickers because tying them would have been social suicide, or customising DMs with the likes of ‘B-I-T-C-H’ and ‘P-E-N-1-5’ in Tipp-Ex. I would never have worn Birkenstocks).

Between 1971 and 2015, Food for Thought served chunky bowls of beany, leafy, stewy goodness for £5.50 to £8 a pop to Londoners and visitors alike. It may have been peak Birkenstock vibes – diners sat cradling their lunch on floor cushions – but it cut through for over four decades and it was prohibitively high rents rather than lack of a market that forced it to close. Places of this kind endure, of course – albeit in postcodes where pulses can pay the bills – but there is also a newer generation of elevated vegetarian (or, should I say, “plant-forward”) restaurants such as Holy Carrot in London or Birmingham’s Land which present the genre in a novel, if less accessible, light. In between those polarities, restaurants exist, but they are few, far between and little discussed.

So imagine my delight at discovering Sylvan on a recent trip to Glasgow, a restaurant and bar in the Woodlands area of the city’s West End serving well-priced vegetarian food à la carte alongside natural wine. I’d done my research on social media, which promised the likes of kimchi soup and hot kecap manis aubergine with the straw-coloured wines I love.

On approaching – past a cat café, no less – I expected to find a tentatively small restaurant, but instead arrived at a large dark-wood dining room warmed up with pendulum lights, house plants and Talking Heads on the speakers. Having booked an early dinner for 5pm prior to the evening’s ceilidh engagement, I’d also expected to find it empty. Not the case. There were several tables getting stuck into their vin jaune aperitifs and local ales from Simple Things brewery alongside baba ganoush with almonds.

Now in its fifth year, Sylvan was cofounded by Colin Campbell and chef Jake Martell, who previously worked together at the Hug and Pint, a music venue also in the West End. Sylvan’s Instagram feed promises simply “medium plates and fine wine” and its vegetarian identity seems merely incidental: sumptuous pictures of plump borlotti with labneh and chilli oil, or beetroot borani crowned with toasted walnuts, beckon the hungry with their inarguable appeal. This is studied and canny. I suspect Campbell and Martell want omnivores through the door and seated before they realise there’s no meat or fish here. Because what might have put them off coming is, I suspect, the very thing that seduces them.

All I need is the menu in my hand to be seduced. The novelty of being able to eat everything on it makes me giddy. How to choose from seven snacks and 13 larger dishes? For someone as greedy as me, a dietary requirement can be a helpful filter, but it’s one that doesn’t apply at Sylvan. In anticipation of dancing the Gay Gordons in less than two hours’ time, and seeing other diners’ dinners emerge from the kitchen – they are, as promised, generous “medium plates” – we pick six between us, and some cashews with seaweed salt, which my husband chases with a Guinness and I with a glass of biodynamic Tuscan fizz.

Martell’s kitchen produces some deft and original cooking. We almost don’t order the halloumi with spinach and fenugreek because I get enough of the squeaky cheese at home. But our server implores us to. Thank God for Julia. A fat cushion of golden, debauched-looking halloumi arrives nestled into a curried green purée; I fall in love. Polenta with mushrooms seems obvious but explodes joyfully with undisclosed tarragon, meanwhile the fried potatoes with (green) tahini and garlic are a happy place, returned to between mouthfuls of other things, some of them eye-popping, others a bit “meh”. Romaine with caesar dressing is a bit insubstantial for £10, and the roast cauliflower with raita and date butter doesn’t quite live up to my excitement – although that could be me getting full and conscious I’ve not had my chickpeas yet: surely the acid test for any self-respecting vegetarian joint. Thankfully, with tomato sauce and pickled feta, Sylvan’s are excellent – piquant, zippy and arguably a bad choice before dancing to fiddle music.

Sylvan could be a blueprint for the kind of vegetarian restaurant we need more of, at once comforting and elevated, qualities captured by our coconut rice pudding with cherries and red wine. When we leave at 7pm, it is rammed with a cross section of Glasgow, Birkenstocks or not – and I’d wager they aren’t all vegetarians. I’m sure cooking like this will invite less meat-eating. And I do recommend bringing Wind-eze if your plans happen to involve a ceilidh afterwards.

Sylvan, 20 Woodlands Road, Glasgow G3 6UR (sylvanglasgow.com). Set lunch £24, wine from £28 a bottle