For one reason or another, I seem to spend less time in restaurants and more time in cafes and at street food markets, these days – or at least it feels that way. There are still many upscale and fine dining places I haven’t tried, both in Edinburgh and Glasgow, so I should endeavour to cover a few more. Life is hard like that.

With that spirit in mind, I had a notion to visit Chardon D’Or on today’s visit to Glasgow, but had a hankering for seafood, so popped in to nearby Gamba, instead.

A traditionally appointed basement restaurant, lighting was low and the atmosphere quite formal as I joined my fellow lunchers.

Their lunchtime menu offers two courses for £18, which sounded pretty fair to me. From a good selection, I started with their fish soup then continued with sea bream served with prawns and a feta salad.

Service was extremely good throughout. I enquired as to whether a side of chips would be required with the bream and was advised that as the soup was very filling, that would be unlikely. This proved to be entirely sound advice and symptomatic of the excellent service that was on offer, throughout.

The soup arrived promptly looking rather neat, with a profuse topping of herb oil. It was an absolutely outstanding soup with impressive complexity of flavour. It was one of the standout dishes of 2014 so proudly takes its place amongst the Soupquest exceptionals.

The main course wasn’t quite to the same standard. It was a lovely piece of fish, but the skin was slightly unevenly crisped and didn’t look the bonniest. The aroma of the dish was from the sesame, which worked nicely with the fish, but the feta felt like an ingredient too far. It was still accomplished stuff, but didn’t quite hit the bullseye.

So overall, I was highly impressed with Gamba. Edinburgh still remains curiously light on specialist seafood places, so it was really good to come across such a great Glasgow exponent. I’d be happy to visit again and would recommend you add it to your list, too.

Scores
Blythe scores Gamba
4/5 for food
3.5/5 for presentation
4.5/5 for service
3.5/5 for setting
giving an overall 15.5/20

I ate: fish soup; sea bream with prawns and feta salad

I drank: water

I wore: blue

Total bill: £19