5 Best Restaurants in Glasgow, Scotland

For many years Stravaigin has maintained the highest quality of cooking, creating adventurous dishes that often combine Asian and local flavors and unusual marriages of ingredients. You can try the piri piri quail (the seasoning is used in Africa) or the restaurant's famous haggis and neeps (turnips), symbolizing its commitment to local produce. A wide variety of wines is available, including some uncommon ones. The café-bar is abuzz with conversation; the downstairs restaurant serves the same menu, but the environment is quieter.

Occupying the former headquarters of the Anchor Line, whose ships sailed from Scotland to America, this bar and restaurant near George Square has been impressively refurbished to create the sense of fine dining aboard a luxury ocean liner. The menu reflects the voyage, too, including Scottish seafood and lamb, and a full range of steaks and their sauces to represent America. Wine and drinks follow the same transatlantic theme. Dine in the bar for more casual fare, such as salads and steak sandwiches. The slightly less expensive but equally elegant basement restaurant, the Atlantic, is French-themed. If you are visiting during the holiday season, the Christmas decorations here are a thing of beauty: the building's pillared facade is wrapped in lights, bows, and greenery, wtih the theme continuing into the luxurious interior. 

In a street of adventurous eateries, Six by Nico adds a new dimension of fun and wit. The concept at this intimate, modern restaurant with black tile, wood floors and tables, and black chairs is a six-course tasting menu linked to a theme that changes every six weeks, whether it's fish-and-chips or Route 66, with dishes that deconstruct and reconstruct the familiar. Five dishes are savory, one is sweet, and the staff lovingly introduces each course. Reservations are essential. The cost of the tasting menu is £25; there is a wine-pairing list for the same price.

Occupying a converted stable behind the Hillhead subway station on busy Ashton Lane, this restaurant is a Glasgow institution, with an untarnished reputation for creative Scottish cooking. Its street-level restaurant is a beautiful courtyard protected by a glass roof, and the more informal brasserie upstairs also serves less expensive dishes like haggis with neeps and tatties or a plate of mussels. The upstairs bar is invariably full and noisy with conversation. The creative menu might includes cod with hazelnuts and truffles, or Galloway roe deer, and there is an excellent lunch and pretheater menu for two or three courses.