What does Glasgow taste like? Find out at a dining experience with a difference – the first city-wide Glasgow Restaurant Festival. Events will run 25th to 24th April and promise to showcase the best of Glasgow’s restaurants in a fun, innovative format.
This is exactly the kind of festival Glasgow needs – a chance to interact with the city’s best chefs, take in elements of street food and find your new favourite restaurants.
The Glasgow Restaurant Festival will be made up of three distinct strands, bringing together the city’s best chefs and most popular restaurants:
Secret Dining (25th March – 31st March)
The Glasgow Restaurant Festival kicks off with a secret dining experience from Glasgow’s favourite guerrilla chefs in a beautiful vintage Spiegeltent on Candleriggs Square in the Merchant City.
Seating up to 200 people, the Spiegeltent will also offer a side of entertainment, with live music, DJs and other performances planned. Unusually, a nine-hole crazy golf course will also be located on Candleriggs Square, alongside a converted horse-box wine bar.
Pop-Up Dining (1st April – 17th April)
From the 1st April to the 17th April, the Spiegeltent will become the city’s ultimate pop-up dining venue, taking diners on a culinary adventure with a different pop-up restaurant every day. Popular Glasgow restaurants including Porter and Rye, Tasty by Tony Singh, Red Onion and 111 by Nico will be collaborating or offering creative menus.
Dining In The City (18th April – 24th April)
To conclude the Glasgow Restaurant Festival, Dining In The City will run between the 18th and 24th April, allowing diners the opportunity to sample specially-priced menus at over 60 of the city’s best restaurants. The Glasgow Restaurant Festival will also see the city’s restaurants play host to a range of special food events. Full details of participating restaurants will be revealed shortly.
Tickets for the Spiegeltent are priced £5 per person with a ticket securing entry to the venue, a welcome drink and live entertainment. Diners will then enjoy dishes priced between £6 and £9 during the Secret Dining experience or a special set menu priced at £15 or £25 during the Pop-Up Dining period.
The inaugural Glasgow Restaurant Festival is the result of a collaboration between Glasgow City Marketing Bureau, Scottish Enterprise and the Glasgow Restaurant Association.
Commenting on the upcoming events, Ryan James, chair of the Glasgow Restaurant Association, said: “Glasgow has one of the most vibrant dining scenes in the country and we’re very lucky to host so many great chefs and restaurants in the one city.
“There’s a real passion for food and culinary experiences and we’re fortunate to have so many innovative chefs and cooks bringing this to life through street food and pop-up events. We wanted to celebrate Glasgow’s culinary diversity and invite some of the city’s best loved chefs to get involved in a slightly different style of cooking, and what better way to do this than to have them all cooking up a storm from a vintage Spiegeltent.”
It was announced last year that Glasgow was the fastest-growing city in the UK for new bar and restaurant openings outside of London, with 25 new openings in the first six months of 2015 alone.