How many different restaurants have there been at 72 Nithsdale Road in Glasgow? I’ve lost count. These are awkward premises, a bar area that’s too narrow for a restaurant, with a bit more space round a corner, although the bonus is that there are two front doors on different streets, useful double visibility for passers-by. But I guess that the issue for anyone setting up here isn’t so much showing residents that you’re there, but convincing them that you’ve got something they want. And if my Saturday drop-in is anything to go by, the new occupants, Nivens- by the Merchant City’s Cafe Source-are onto a winning ticket. The place is humming.
We’re talking ‘small plates’. A sigh of resignation here: I’m not a huge fan. It’s all very well in the Middle East, say, where mezze dishes are collectively informed by some traditional organising principle, but the hazard in the UK is that you end up eating weird combinations: cold starters alongside shrunken, hot main courses, and full size desserts. If you ask me, there’s an awful lot to be said for a three-course meal.
Still, I get the motivation. Small plates keep down the overall cost of a meal and only people who get a shock when they see how these dishes accrue in price might wonder if they’re actually value for money. This formula helps encourage the faulty belief that eating out isn’t really much more expensive than eating in.
So here we are, tucking into reassuringly sour sourdough bread followed by a random, “when the kitchen’s ready”, procession of dishes that frankly, don’t go together. The first thing that smacks you between the eyes at Nivens is how good the food looks, yet not in an uptight, obsessional, tricksy way. So here are two smartly dressed Cullen Skink arancini, in a limpid bright green pool of vivid leek purée that has seaweed undertones. The smokiness of the haddock builds up in the mouth incrementally until eventually it releases a tarry pungency found in the smoke-darkened walls of Arbroath’s famous smokie ‘barrels’ (sheds). Lemony potato purée piped on top might sound prissy, but isn’t. It reminds me of Greek skordalia, and moderates the woody presence.
Next comes the onion, spinach and carrot bhaji. So often this B word flags up identifiable vegetable matter in a greasy batter, but this one is refined, a three tiered job. At the base, a piquant dal, fiercely spiced with chilli and cumin seed, next the bhaji- tangible cauliflower florets in a cleanly fried, pungently spiced mass- topped by a translucent, mint-loaded oniony pickle, and coriander. It’s not for wimps, but more fool them.
And this treatment of Ramsay’s of Carluke’s pork belly might be the best I’ve encountered yet. The crusted, caramelised meat is cooked to collapse, its near liquified fat on top dissolving and enriching the lean meat below. Richness is offset by a fennel remoulade that cools and refreshes. The pineapple chunks are weeping their sweet-sharp juices and sizzling hot from the griddle. Net effect? A dish that sits surprisingly lightly on the stomach.
Now we get round to the ham hock terrine. Being cold, it has waited its turn after the hot dishes. By this point, it’s not really what we want to eat but that doesn’t stop us admiring the herby, fatty forcemeat dotted with yellow mustard seeds that encircles soft ham strands, its mellow piccalilli, its fresh apple sauce.
From the savoury dishes I form the impression that while Nivens has a most competent chef with not inconsiderable technical aptitude, he or she is cooking in relaxed mode as befits a pub. For pudding, a peanut, banana and honeycomb chocolate pot turns out to be restrainedly sweet and more grown-up than kiddie, despite its toothsome title. Roasted plums, the meaty, tough-skinned US variety, are nicely spiced but under-ripe. They come with meringue and whipped mascarpone. It ticks the pudding box, but I sense that the kitchen’s heart is with the savouries. We’re served pleasantly and efficiently, and the meal turns out to be really quite cheap, so that confounds my theory. Thus far, Nivens looks like a survivor.
Nivens by Café Source, 72 Nithsdale Rd, Glasgow 0141 471 9666
Lunch/Dinner £16-24
Food rating 9/10
Joanna Blythman is the Guild of Food Writers Writer of the Year 2018
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