The headquarters for James and Louise Rusk’s restaurant business is a charming, tastefully decorated, open-floor office in a grand old building close to Central Station. The reason for our visit is to talk about The Spanish Butcher being crowned Scotland’s Most Stylish Restaurant at a glittering ceremony in Kelvingrove Art Gallery and a collection of other recent honours.
The popular place on Miller Street in the city centre was also the first Scottish restaurant to ever be nominated in the Best Restaurant in the UK category at the GQ Food & Drinks Awards. It competed against Westerns Laundry, Core by Clare Smyth, Native and The Barbary, all located in London. The GQ Awards, now in their fourth year, recognise the most discerning restaurants, bars, interiors, experiences, and leaders in UK food and drink industry.
Thousands of entries were received from across the UK, considered by a judging panel including chef Richard Corrigan, GQ editor, Dylan Jones and interior designer Tara Bernerd.
Ultimately The Spanish Butcher lost out to Core by Clare Smyth – the only female chef to run a restaurant with three Michelin-stars in the UK – but the restaurant has piqued the interest of those looking at the new Glasgow food scene.
This week, it was named Restaurant Newcomer of the Year at the CIS Excellence Awards. There may have been other trophies, certificates or awards that we have missed. The hospitality and lifestyle group Rusk & Rusk have had a busy first half of the year. This is set to continue.
Alongside The Spanish Butcher, they also have Hutchesons and The Butchershop Grill. In a interview with Glasgowist last year, Louise and James confirmed plans for a fourth restaurant, which we now expect to open over the summer. More on that soon.
Opening its doors in December 2016, The Spanish Butcher is known for its steak and seafood dishes, serving the finest grades of Galician Beef, premium Iberico Jamon and seafood infused with Spanish and Mediterranean flavours.
But the Spanish Butcher is about more than just food. The chic, modern interior takes inspiration from New York’s dining scene to deliver a distinctive dining experience.
We wanted to find out more about the restaurant, so we sat down with James and Louise Rusk.
What did you like about that particular space on Miller Street that became The Spanish Butcher?
Louise: It was symmetrical. We always wanted a place where you have a door in the middle and windows on either side. This was the first space we say that had that.
We could have big, massive windows and a really cool door and that was really where it started. It was an interesting street as well.
James: And it was a complete empty shell, as well, so straight away we saw that it was a blank canvas for us. We thought to ourselves, “excellent, we can do whatever we want in this space.” And we did.
How do you start to build the restaurant, then, when you don’t have any of the parts that you need in place?
James: At first, it’s just a case of going through the checklist. You need toilets, staff changing, a bar. You need to have a kitchen, you need the dining room, somewhere where the bins go, you need a cellar.
Once you’ve worked all that out, you can say “this is what we need”. Then, the next stage is to start thinking about how we want it to feel and what we want the space to do. It needed different sections. When you walk in the door, you can go to the bar, there’s a cool front area, then there’s pod zones so we close them off as well. It becomes more of a multi-functional space.
Louise: It all just comes together at the same time. And you look at the amount of covers you can get in and how that gets serviced by the size of the kitchen. So it just then all starts working itself round. We always have concepts, the ideas and we look for spaces that are unique and quite quirky. Streets that are quite unusual so when we saw this space – we just knew what concept we wanted to input.
We had already thought of Spanish steak, we had an idea of what the menu was going encompass. So everything just starts, you just walk in and ideas they just start flooding into your head. It just all starts happening and then you get really excited and then you start calling people.
This is happening, you know. Let’s do this!
Across your venues, they are known for great steak, it was interesting to see The Spanish Butcher recognised for its style and design. How important is that for a restaurant?
James: I think with The Spanish Butcher, it definitely is, and in a lot of the space – less is more. It’s about a feeling. Where the lights are and how close are the tables, do you feel comfortable when you walk in – do you know where to go? With these great big curtains? Sometimes people don’t know where to go, but they will when they come back! You can have a bit of fun and have layers and little surprises.
I think style is not just about a look, it’s a feeling. And it’s real and there’s depth to it, and it’s not all just smoke and mirrors because then you sit down, the service is on point, the knowledge is on point, and the food and the music. Every single decision that’s been made is to give it that real depth of character as well.
Louise: So then when something like the Scottish Style Awards come around, every two years, and when you hear that you’ve been shortlisted or nominated you get really excited because then you think; well actually, everything, all our ideas, all our vision has come to fruition because there’s such an iconic awards. It’s not something that you put yourself in for, it gets announced and you kinda go, “Woah, okay we’re on the map. Somebody’s noticed us.” So that’s exciting, and then to win it was just awesome.
James: I think people are really enjoying it. We always hope that those ideas when you’re sitting with the team or we’re lying in bed talking to each other, you hope those ideas work out and you haven’t gone totally rogue [laughs].
Do you get the sense that there’s a bit of an awakening to Glasgow as a food destination, that there are more people looking our direction? Particularly in the context of the GQ Award nomination.
James: That was another huge one. I didn’t mind losing to somebody so exceptional, but there’s definitely an acknowledgment there.
It’s been going on a long time. There’s some incredible people doing incredible work in Glasgow and to be part of the growing of that consciousness is for us, first of all, great – it’s also great for the city. We’ve obviously got a lot invested in the city, we’ve a massive employment in the city. But for people outside to start to look in is very exciting.
Louise: I think, obviously, Glasgow is a great dining destination. Now, it takes years for that to happen, from great operators and great restaurants and people in hospitality to build that momentum and now, it’s being seen.
The rest of Scotland, the rest of UK, are starting to talk about us more. It is great for Scottish restaurants to be recognised for the hospitality scene here.
You talked about having a clear idea about what The Spanish Butcher would be, do you look to other places or other restaurants for influences?
Louise: We looked at different countries, different cities, and things that we enjoyed. Places where we had a good experience. We like to take little snippets of everything.
James had worked in Balthazar in New York and subsequently we both came to love and enjoy it as a city. The north of Spain is a real food heaven as well. We’re known for steak so we went down the route of looking for something else. What other steak out there is going to really match what we produce here in Scotland and the Galician steak is just phenomenal and totally different, which is also exciting to us because it meant we were offering something that would be different but complementary to the best Scottish beef.
I think you can really see the evolution of our restaurants as well in The Spanish Butcher. It’s just not steak, it is fish and we’ve got great vegetarian and vegan plates as well. We are building our flavour profiles and looking at how our menus are produced.
The Spanish Butcher
80 Miller Street
Glasgow
G1 1DT
T: 0141 406 9880