The Glasgow Restaurant Festival has brought together some of the city’s leading restaurants and chefs for a moveable feast of restaurant crossovers and expertly crafted street food versions of top dishes. In the first year of the event, a spiegeltent on Candleriggs Square has been home to a rolling roster of pop-up dining experiences from the likes of Red Onion, Arisaig, 111 by Nico and Mr Singh’s India.
The culinary extravaganza comes to a close tomorrow with a Taste of Asia from Bar Soba. The festival continues until the 24th April with a week of specially-priced menus and events at over 60 of Glasgow’s best restaurants.
One of the prime movers behind the festival is Ryan James, the chairman of the Glasgow Restaurant Association and the owner of Two Fat Ladies.
Ryan studied drama at Glasgow University and started out in the hospitality industry at Rogano in the late 80s as a part time bar tender before becoming a manager. After working his way around other venues, the opportunity to run his own restaurant presented itself and he’s never looked back.
He is now one of the leading restaurateurs in the city with Two Fat Ladies on Dumbarton Road and Blythswood Square and The Buttery in Finnieston.
In the space of just over 15 years, Ryan’s businesses have gone from having 4 employees with a turnover of £100,000 to employing around 57 with a turnover around £2,750,000.
He is an enthusiastic and engaging advocate for Glasgow’s dining scene.
Glasgowist phoned Ryan this week to talk about the Glasgow Restaurant Festival, his own story, where Glasgow’s first Michelin star will come from and the food landscape in the city right now.
Glasgowist: What was your thinking when you opened your first restaurant, what did you want to achieve?
Ryan James: I had worked in the restaurant for a number of years in various positions and in one of those restaurants one of the clients approached me and asked me to go into partnership with them and open a restaurant in Milngavie called Gavin’s Mill and that was my first foray into doing it on my own.
I suppose I felt like I had gone as far as I could with the company I was with. I had no desire to move away from Glasgow really. It was never really a plan to open a restaurant. I don’t think I ever would unless Gordon had approached me. At that stage in my life it wasn’t even on my agenda.
His family came from Milngavie so the whole idea was to open up a really decent fine dining restaurant in Milngavie and it just so happened that the Gavin’s Mill premises became available pretty much at the same time. We opened it as café/bar in the basement and then a fine dining restaurant on the ground floor. It did very well actually.
So did you get the confidence from that to look at a situation where you would have more than one place?
I think you get caught up in your hype a wee bit. When you hit the moment of having a bit of success on your hands the notion is to do another one. I remember even with Gavin’s Mill the banks were practically throwing money at us to do something else. We thought at the time we really wanted to concentrate on this one first. Then we eventually sold the business and dissolved the partnership and I decided to buy Two Fat Ladies in the West End, which was a much smaller restaurant on Dumbarton Road. Then that became so successful.
It got to a situation where we were turning away so many people that it just made sense to open up in the city centre. There was no rush to do it and it was all about waiting for the right site. Every time we have opened somewhere it has all been about waiting for the right place. I do go and visit quite a lot of properties, even still. But if it doesn’t have the right feeling for me then I won’t just go ahead and do it.
What are you looking for then – are you looking at layout, the right corner of the city or a blank canvas that you can build something onto?
It’s a total intuition thing. I wouldn’t put it down to square footage or a look or anything. The three we have got at the moment are all very unique. I just know if the space is right. There are some sites you just look at and know it’s never going to happen.
Two Fat Ladies, we took it on 15 years ago and it had been very famous in its day. It was starting to wain a little bit. So we started off wanting to push forward that brand and, having been involved in the restaurant scene in Glasgow at that time, understanding what it was all about at that moment as well. We worked hard to try to capture the zeitgeist.
The same with our place in the city centre – I think it had failed three times as a pub but for me it was a great site for a restaurant. Other Restaurateurs thought it was the wrong size, too small. For us coming from the West End where we basically had a single end shop it was more than big enough. It was there that we built up the cash to do The Buttery which is a completely different beast altogether.
That was another place I’d had my eye on for a long time. I used to work for a brewery and they owned The Buttery and so I had spent a little bit of time here. I just knew that if it came on the market then I’d want to get my hands on it. Then the fire happened and various things and it was where it was. Then we managed to take on the property and slowly refurbish it to what it is today.
The Buttery is probably the biggest gamble we’ve taken in that people said it was the duffest location in Glasgow, there’s no way people are going to go there, it’s had its heyday. I was still very much of the opinion that actually this area [Finnieston] is a very good one to be in because it is close to the city centre but far enough away from it to get away from it.
Was it a case of building up things with the local community then?
Well we had absolutely no idea what was going to happen to the Exhibition Centre, we certainly had no idea what was going to happen with The Hydro still to open.
Glasgow’s caught up with your ambition for the area.
[laughs] That’s all happened around us since we’ve opened. It’s fantastic because the area is a bit more buzzing than it was and with the new quality housing that’s going up around us too it’s all helping.
It is definitely a city centre location, all be it divided by the M8! Not that far from Argyle Street.
What’s your general feeling on the restaurant scene. You’ve seen all the highs and lows over the last number of years. Where is Glasgow restaurant culture right now?
Oh man.. I think we’re ahead of where we are ten years ago. Glasgow is seen as one of the must have cities for some of the big restaurant brands. So it is starting to catch up with Manchester and Liverpool. Does that mean the restaurant scene is getting much brighter and more about local produce? Probably not, it’s probably getting more commercial on a certain level, particularly in the city centre.
There are still a number of independent operators doing some fantastic stuff and the food scene in Glasgow is very buoyant. A lot of different, interesting, exciting stuff going on. Which is what we’re trying to showcase at the Glasgow Restaurant Festival.
What about retaining young talent in Glasgow, is that easier now? Obviously chefs of a certain level will go off and do the circuit – maybe work in America, maybe London, France – but are there opportunities for them here?
I think someone who has real ambition would start in Glasgow but wouldn’t stay for long. I think you have to go and do the tour. Work in France or maybe California – there’s some amazing restaurants there. Certainly in London too.
I think if Glasgow gets a Michelin star soon, that’s where it will come from. Someone who we don’t know yet who’s going to pop up – could be Glaswegian, maybe not, but they’ve done the full tour of food culture. I think in Glasgow there’s a lot of really good stuff going on. There are a number of restaurants who are doing pretty amazing stuff – The Gannet, Ox and Finch, Brian Maule, ourselves to a lesser extent.
We’re more celebration, family restaurant. We cater to what people want rather than taking an educational aspect on food. I think if someone really wanted to broaden their knowledge they’d probably want to go out of the city.
In terms of getting people involved in the hospitality business though there is a lot of that going on and we want Glaswegians to look on it as a real career option and learn the skills through training courses. We’ve brought on eight new people in recent months on courses through the Prince’s Trust. I think there is still a lot of work to be done in schools to get the message out that working in hospitality is a viable career.
What are you doing at the Glasgow Restaurant Festival?
We had a Two Fat Ladies pop-up restaurant in the speigeltent at Candleriggs Square. We did twice the amount of people that we thought we were going to do which was interesting, especially on a dreich Monday night in Glasgow.
It was a fantastic night for the chefs and waiting staff that were there as it was such a different experience to what they are used to.
There’s a bit of theatre to it isn’t there, and it’s a way to meet new people and interact with them in a way you might not do in a restaurant.
Yes, that was the thing that I noticed. Now that the restaurants have taken over and it is different pop-ups every day, every day you go down you get a different personality. Each restaurant has its own personality and personalities.
For us, setting up a restaurant experience for the day it was a buzz, we got there at ten o’clock in the morning and it was ten o’clock at night before you knew where you were. We served nearly 200 people it was absolutely brilliant.
Should there be more opportunities for restaurants to collaborate in Glasgow?
Definitely. That’s kind of what the Restaurant Association is all about. I’d like to see a lot more of that. In terms of doing an event of the size and scale of the Restaurant Festival? I think it has to be an annual event. But there’s no particular reason why there can’t be pop-ups – like the way John Quigley [from Red Onion] sometimes pops-up at The Buttery for the evening.
We combined our menu with Marco Pierre White at the Restaurant Festival and it’s something we had never thought of. When we first discussed it we were going to do two separate menus and people would be offered both menus. When we sat down and talked about it we realised there was no point doing that. We decided what we were doing, what they were doing, put it all together and had a whale of a time.
That probably turned out more of a unique experience then.
Yes, our chefs were mucking in with the Marco Pierre White guys and the same for the waiters so it was a really good day. It has to be fun. It’s really difficult to make money at these types of events. It’s not about making money, it’s about PR and just getting out there really. It involves a lot of logistics to move a restaurant to the Merchant City for one day and do 200 covers! It’s worked every time though.
Tasty by Tony Singh did incredibly well on Sunday. Gamba and Porter & Rye were an absolutely fantastic weekend. The place was bouncing. As soon as a table was cleared there were more people waiting to sit down and the staff were absolutely loving it. Well, the waiters maybe not so much but the chefs were definitely loving it. You don’t really get that in a restaurant.
Chefs rarely can go or even look out into the restaurant and see what’s going on. There’s usually that fourth wall where the chefs don’t see what’s happening. This brought people out of their regular day to day and gave them different experiences.
Derek [Marshall] from Gamba took a bit of persuading to do the festival. That’s his business up there, he likes to be in his restaurant and it is rare that he’s away for two days. He came down and did a collaboration, now next year he wants to come down and do another day on his own. So you can see the benefit of it.
What about how Glasgow diners have reacted to the festival in its first year?
I’ve been amazed at how busy the tent has been, considering the weather and everything. On the Monday night when we were there it wasn’t that heavily booked, you wouldn’t expect it to be, but there was double if not treble the numbers just with people walking up.
The net economic benefit for the city in terms of the investment from the Glasgow Restaurant Association, the overall payback is pretty huge really, particularly in PR opportunities but also the fact that people are spending money. The other restaurants and bars in the Merchant City will have seen a boost too. Hopefully after their night in the spiegeltent people are going on afterwards and having a drink somewhere and enjoying the city.
