Smoked meat and Corpse Revivers make for an exciting dining experience at Bothwell Street’s Gōst.
Reviewed by Natasha Radmehr
Have you ever heard of a Seelie?
Until I dined at Gōst, a restaurant and bar on Glasgow’s Bothwell Street, I hadn’t.
For those similarly unversed in Scottish folklore, a Seelie is a good fairy. An Unseelie is its malevolent counterpart.
This information is being relayed to me by Ewan, the restaurant’s friendly head bartender.
He’s chatting about future concepts for the restaurant’s cocktail menu as I sip on a Corpse Reviver No.2, which has the advertised effect on my weary bones.
“We’re called Gōst because our meat is smoked, and in the past people would mistake peat smoke for ghostly spirits,” he says.
“We want our restaurant to have that storytelling aspect; to be a place that sparks conversation.”
STYLE AND SUSTENANCE
There’s plenty to talk about.
Gōst, which counts Glaschu and the Duke’s Umbrella as stablemates, is one of the only restaurants in the UK to use cuts of Angus beef from ex-dairy cattle reared on small-batch, sustainable farms.
Because these cows are retired onto grass pastures and fed a natural diet, it’s said ex-dairy beef possesses a greater depth of flavour.
I try it thinly sliced, cured and doused in olive oil as a snack, then as a decadent chateaubriand.
It’s richer, almost saltier, than a typical steak.
I’ve never smoked a cigar, yet have a craving for one post- meal; I’m unsure whether that’s down to the meat or Gōst’s low-lit, speakeasy vibe.
A DINING EXPERIENCE
Instead, I order a dessert cocktail of rum, tequila, coffee and miso truffles.
I’ll be returning for that, the beef, and the seafood I didn’t try: garlic butter snails, octopus with squid ink aioli, charcoal- grilled seabass.
Oh, and the chat. That was pretty damn good, too.
Thanks to Gōst for inviting us to sample the menu.
THE DETAILS
GOST
77 Bothwell Street
Glasgow
G2 6TS
t. 0141 243 2162
