On my final night in Scotland, I treated my friends to dinner for allowing me to stay in their home during my time in Glasgow. We had talked about going for seafood, and my friend suggested two places, one of which they had never tried. So, we settled on Kelp, which is the sister restaurant of the modern Scottish restaurant Ardnamurchan that we ate at on my first night. And this was the best choice we could have made for seafood in Glasgow.
We didn’t know what to expect at Kelp — we figured it’d be on par with Ardnamurchan, which was a fantastic meal. What we found exceeded our expectations.
While Ardnamurchan is a sleek modern style pub, Kelp is more of a modern fish market — a large open space full of satisfied diners. It’s a comfortable, busy restaurant with helpful staff (we weren’t the only table that had questions about the menu). It was helpful to know that the dishes are all smaller for sharing, like seafood tapas.
Once we knew that all the dishes were small, the three of us discussed what was appealing. To my friend’s dismay, they were out of langoustines (I was a little disappointed as I hadn’t had any on this trip). Even without the langoustines, we found plenty of appealing options — so many that we had to debate which ones to exclude. Considering the menu isn’t large, it took a while for the three of us to decide on six dishes that sounded best. While the menu contained familiar seafood, the preparation of everything was new and innovative — it wasn’t like the delicious simplicity of the seafood shack in Oban.
We ordered six dishes, plus two desserts and three drinks. We figured if we were still hungry we could order more, or there were other places to stop on the way back to my friends’ home. And everything we ordered was plenty. I could’ve done without the dessert, but that wasn’t my decision. I only had a taste, so I don’t remember much of it.
The easiest pick on the menu was half a dozen oysters with a variety of sauces that included calamansi, mint, and Sichuan pepper, rhubarb and ginger mignonette, and seaweed hot sauce (which was the the best of three). The colorful array made it a treat for the senses.
The most unusual of our choices was the Orkney crab doughnut with chili and sesame — none of us knew what to expect from this description, but we had to find out. It was a ball full of crab and seasoning with a delightful sauce surrounding it. We all thought it was our least favorite dish, which means that it was good but didn’t come close to everything else we ordered.
My first choice from the menu was the Tobermory smoked trout with harissa, yogurt, pomegranate, and quinoa popcorn. It was a wonderful mix of flavor and texture — the sourness of the yogurt with the sweet pomegranate and lightly smoked trout was well balanced and delicious. I could’ve eaten a few more plates of this on my own.
My friend chose the Barra scallops, something I realized after the first night in Glasgow she will not pass up unless there’s langoustines. The scallops at Kelp came with hazelnut butter and topped with radish and asparagus. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted a scallop so fresh and tender; it practically melted as I ate it.
We also tried Moray Firth squid with mango, habanero, coriander salsa. Some of the squid was grilled and some fried to give the dish more texture. Kelp had a way of offering great texture to each dish — it made all the flavors even better.
The food at Kelp was so artistic to admire, I completely neglected to take a single picture of the restaurant. So, you’ll have to trust my descriptions of it. It’s a lively, yet comfortable dining experience.
Considering the quality of the meal and the amount of food we ordered, dinner at Kelp was reasonable. It was about $162 for the three of us, which wasn’t much more than a typical dinner for two with drinks in New York.
