Hippy Cafés and 2-for-1 Pizzas: How to Survive an Extended Stay in Glasgow

I would usually spend 24-48 hours in any given city on my work travels; enough time for one or two meals, half a dozen coffees, and a partial night’s sleep. Passing monuments such as the Coliseum on my taxi ride to the airport without being able to so much as slow down for a picture was a painful experience to which I had become quite accustomed. My work trip to Glasgow – the last before I left American Apparel – inspired in me, however, precisely the opposite feeling.

 I won’t deny the rumour that the city’s lack of culinary variety, and my extended stay in it, contributed to my resignation from American Apparel (in fact, I just started that rumour myself with this very sentence). To be fair to me, I gave it a good running chance. For the first week, I stopped into a different beautiful old building every night on my way back to the hotel, each one offering a different foreign fare: Italian, Spanish, Thai, Indian. I thought, like in most metropolitan areas I was familiar with, that these restaurants had been independently established by someone originating from these respective places, here to offer Glasgow a taste of their home cuisine. Looks can be very deceiving, I discovered. Each one of these restaurants was actually part of a bigger chain, with commercially printed menus, and food that had likely arrived in their kitchens pre-prepared (or so it tasted). Between these and the TGI Friday’s, Hard Rock Café, Pret à Manger, and Starbucks, it seemed as though there were no local, freshly prepared options in Glasgow’s downtown area. I even stopped in at a place that had “Haggis, Neeps & Tatties” on special – whatever that means – thinking perhaps the Glaswegians save all of their effort in the kitchen for local delicacies. Well, let me tell you, they most certainly do not. I have no words to describe that meal, but I do have a photo of it and I think its physical appearance is accurately representative of its flavour.

The Atholl Arms' offer of the night

My coworker about to dive in to her "Haggis, Neeps & Tatties"

The next week, having lost all hope, I ate exclusively at the hotel (the Citizen M) – whose inviting lounge and friendly staff almost made up for the fact that I spent a month alone in a room clearly designed for a teenage couple’s weekend sexcapades. The first night offered chicken curry: not the kind you would find at an Indian restaurant, rather the kind you might cook for yourself at home, but an altogether fairly tasty dish. The next night the only available hot meal was once again chicken curry. The following four nights promised more chicken curry. On the seventh consecutive night of chicken curry I finally understood that the Citizen M was either initiating a New Age chicken-curry Atkins-diet-inspired cleanse, or had, as the room led me to believe, never intended its guests to stay more than a single night [of foodless sex] at a time.

What is that transporter tube doing in the middle of the perfectly king-bed-sized CitizenM hotel room?
Housing the toilet and shower of course. Right there with you in the room.
And that's the teeny sink to the left that couldn't fit in the pod with the toilet and shower in it.
Best of all: you can choose to light it with any colour you like, such as red, purple, green, blue,
or anything except regular light colour really. 

Just as my palette was preparing a counter-strike to this onslaught, I discovered in the same day the two near-daily stops that would allow me to survive the next few weeks in Glasgow. The first of these was Riverhill Coffee Bar on Gordon Street. From the day I discovered it, to the day I left Glasgow – barring the not too infrequent days I didn’t have time to eat lunch at all – I had my midday meal in this blue-fronted café. Twelve consecutive occasions, and not one bite was a disappointment. A different extensive variety of homemade baked goods, soups, salads, tarts, sandwiches, and wraps was offered every day alongside what is most certainly the best coffee in the city. I waited until my complimentary full English breakfast from that morning had completely worn off, around 4pm, and by this time could usually secure one of the five available seats in the café. My personal favourite choices were the egg and chorizo on bagel, spinach salad, and medium latte with a Nanaimo bar for desert.

After work at the store I would return to Gordon Street for my dinner break at the Republic Bier Halle, famous for its large selection of local microbrewery beers, often served cold, not a single one of which I tried because the taste of liquid yeast is not one that I find all too appealing, I’m sorry to say. What brought me back every night was the fire-oven baked thin crust pizza served with chilli oil; and the fact that if I arrived before 10pm I had a second pizza free of charge to last me through my night of computer work (let’s not forget I’m a gormandiser with a proclivity to penny-pinch). 

Nevertheless, I was very thankful to leave Glasgow when I finally did. Even I couldn’t have continued to eat pizzas and Nanaimo bars every day. If you do find yourself in the unfortunate circumstance of being both hungry and in Glasgow, I highly recommend you make a beeline for Gordon Street, just off Buchanan.