Marina O'Loughlin on restaurantsRestaurantsReviewThe pole-up-jacksie staff robotically recite every component of every dish with the animation and charm of a Theresa May interview
How dare I? How dare I be critical about a small, new indie restaurant, its name an elision of the chef/owner’s two sons (and the number of tables they, er, used to have)? Where it’s clearly the work of the bleeding inevitable passionate maverick who has dedicated his life, soul, savings? I usually don’t dare: these are the reviews I hate to write, so I spend an uncomfortable first few courses of Bilson Eleven’s £49 tasting menu frantically trying to look on the bright side, make allowances. Warm bread with butter whipped with malt: nice. Amuse bouche referencing a ploughman’s lunch: not bad, with its bendy little horseradish and salmon cracker and ramekin layered with ham hough, pickled onion and cheese foam. Oh god, foam. But, yeah, not bad.
We’re back with the foams, gels and deconstructions like it’s the early noughties. “Curried skink” offers a small fillet of mustard-and-peppered haddock and cumin-laced potato foam, blobs of acrid lime pickle gel and dense little blocks fashioned from potato and leek – not so much dish as gustatory jigsaw. Chicken liver parfait isn’t awful, just odd: over-boozed, sweet with quince, its near-liquid nature not conducive to being eaten with a fork, despite crumbs of crisped chicken skin, chunks of brioche and tiny dice of chicken mousseline, pointless in its creamy egg-white blandness. There’s a light touch with desserts – sticky malt cake with a smear of smoky Talisker custard – and a heavy touch with excellent cheeses: generous and with an Auld Alliance theme. The heather-coloured chairs are comfortable. I’m tempted to note “good for Glasgow”, but I’m not entirely stupid.
But there are also monstrosities: a mushy great slab of sous-vided monkfish is crusted with peanuts and assaulted by two sugary sauces, one of caramelised cauliflower and one of mulched-up raisins. What. Were. They. Thinking? It’s so clunky, so cloth-palated – super-sweet and murky, then the peanuts – that I can’t eat more than a forkful.
The gloves come hurtling off. This is cooking from someone who spends too much time not eating in today’s restaurants but watching today’s food TV, where presentation is given outlandish prominence, because, well, visual medium. There’s no harmony, just a parroting of modish ingredients: pork belly, flabby from its water bath, comes with a wafer of puffed crackling, an overcooked, far from luscious cheek that looks like a poo emoji and is swamped by gluey brown sauce, a muddy mound of miso carrots and a blob of spring onion puree (one pal: “I like the mushy peas”). It’s wildly oversalted, medicinal with Chinese five spice and teased into the most tortured plate arrangement since my photo byline. The sauces on that monkfish dish are two thick, brownish smears. My brother laughs: “Looks like they’ve employed Bobby Sands.”
But what really tips me into writing this place up, rather than chalking it down to experience, is the arse-clenching pretension of it all. This lot, with their “edgy” Dennistoun location in an 1850s town house five minutes from the city centre, their crooked-pinkie, waxed-moustache, silk-waistcoated, tartan-carpeted perjink-ness, seem to think they’re here not so much to cook dinner as épater la bourgeoisie. The wee lounge upstairs, with its fugly overstuffed leather sofas in which you’re invited to peruse the menu; the uninspiring winelist; the Magic FM-style soundtrack: I remain un-épater-ed.
Local opinion is ecstatic: I wonder if I’ve been to the same place. Apart from one lovely, tartan-skirted gal, there’s no “East End warmth”: the pole-up-jacksie male staff robotically recite every single component of every single dish with the animation and charm of a Theresa May interview. I’m painfully aware of courting an avalanche of “Piss aff back to That London, you snotty southern cow” from the foodie equivalent of cybernats, but, well, we all have our crosses to bear.
I’m not saying the kitchen is without talent – there’s evidence of technique here, frequently far too much of it – but, pace the miso, it’s all so dated, so derivative. I’m comparing that peanut monkfish – yep, it’s still living with me, like a goitre – to the pork dish I had a few weeks ago at Stockport’s Where The Light Gets In, almost austere in its beautiful, delicious simplicity. This lot need to switch off the box, chill the hell out – and get out more.
Bilson Eleven 10 Annfield Place, Dennistoun, Glasgow G31, 0141-554 6259. Open Weds-Sun, dinner only, 5-9pm (last orders). About £36 a head for three courses; tasting menu £49, both plus drinks and service.
Food 4/10
Value for money 4/10
Atmosphere 4/10
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