I visited The Clarence in Hyndland, a new neighbourhood spot in the West End. I spoke to chef Declan King about the menu and the latest venture from the team behind Cail Bruich and Brett.
The Clarence is a new concept by the team which hopes to combine the charm of a traditional pub with the inviting atmosphere of a neighbourhood dining room.
The menu champions fresh seasonal ingredients - expect dry-aged steaks cooked over an open flame, monkfish tail, pork chop, chicken Kyiv and Sunday roast featuring chateaubriand.
An early menu is available midweek during the day and early evening, there's nostalgic snacks, an oyster happy hour and bar snacks alongside a fully stocked gantry of draught beers, wines, and cocktails.
The Clarence is a new concept by the team which hopes to combine the charm of a traditional pub with the inviting atmosphere of a neighbourhood dining room.
The menu champions fresh seasonal ingredients - expect dry-aged steaks cooked over an open flame, monkfish tail, pork chop, chicken Kyiv and Sunday roast featuring chateaubriand.
An early menu is available midweek during the day and early evening, there's nostalgic snacks, an oyster happy hour and bar snacks alongside a fully stocked gantry of draught beers, wines, and cocktails.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00So the Clarence, tell me a little bit about, what's the menu all about, what's the kind of main focus of the menu?
00:08Well, so the main focus really is a relaxed atmosphere, something that you can go and eat in every night of the week, not a special occasion type place.
00:18Obviously we want people to come for special occasions also, but it's a more accessible type of menu for people to come and enjoy every day of the week.
00:26So, big emphasis on the grill side of things, the simplification of the main courses and all that.
00:32More of an accessible type of atmosphere is what we're trying to create.
00:37It's quite classic in terms of the selections, right?
00:39Yeah, very classical, so obviously prawn cocktails, soup, pudding, trifle, for example, just very classical food you'd probably have back in the day your mum would have cooked you.
00:49It's kind of what we're trying to bring, a homely feel to the food, you don't feel out of place coming two or three times a week.
00:56So that's kind of what we're trying to achieve really with the menu, is make it accessible and nostalgic almost for some people to come in.
01:05Because it's a neighbourhood spot and because you've got the bar, people will be coming in for drinks and stuff like that.
01:12Have you thought about that in terms of what people will be drinking as well as how that matches up with the food?
01:18It's not quite pairing, but how it matches up.
01:20Yeah, so not so much pairing, but definitely in terms of more emphasis on the beer side of things and wines by the glasses.
01:32So it does match up to the simplicity of the whole menu, but the food is quite simple like that.
01:40It's stripped away, there's no fuss, there's no microherbs on everything and all that sort of thing.
01:46It's very easy and accessible, which is probably the same on the drink side of things.
01:53It's something that you can have every day of the week, you don't need to, it's not a Saturday type menu.
01:58You come in, you want to get dressed up and get fancy.
02:00It's more of a, everyone wants to come every day.
02:04If you were going to choose your kind of chef's tea version of this in terms of what you would have for dinner yourselves,
02:10what are the dishes that most appeal to you?
02:13I'd come in for the grill, the grill always for me.
02:15Anything cooked over charcoal, cooked over fire, definitely going to be something that we particularly fancy.
02:20The sirloin is probably a big seller we've got.
02:24We get the dry ages around the corner.
02:26We get all the sirloins in, we dry age them ourselves for a few days and then we get them cooked over fire.
02:32You can't beat that, it's just a classic thing.
02:35You can get a couple of sides, fries, mash, whatever you fancy.
02:40But the steak for me, that's what I'd be going for, sirloin, 100%.
02:43It says for two, but I'm pretty sure I could polish it all for myself.
02:46You like a challenge, I like it.
02:49And then there's pub snacks as well, so the kitchen thinking about things that people might just want to have
02:55if they want to come in for a drink and pick away at something, right?
02:58Yeah, definitely.
02:59So this is probably one of the areas that was revamped the most when we changed to the Clarence.
03:06And an emphasis on the bar snacks, you can sit in here for a few drinks throughout the day,
03:10Saturday, Sunday, Friday, whenever you finish work, come and just sit and just continually have bar snacks all day.
03:16Not everyone, especially when they're drinking, not everyone wants a big heavy meal.
03:20You can maybe nibble at things throughout the day.
03:23We've got a scotch egg on there, which is great.
03:25A couple of bar snacks, like chips and Bernays and olives and stuff.
03:28People nibble at it, maybe they're going to come here earlier and then they're going to go for dinner somewhere else.
03:32It just keeps the trade coming through the bar, basically.
03:35Do you feel like Glasgow is an interesting place to work in hospitality if you want to build your career?
03:41Is it a good place to start out?
03:43Yeah, I think definitely now.
03:45When I first started out, probably 10, 12 years ago, there wasn't much on the scene in Glasgow.
03:51There was a couple of big restaurants, one down the road, there was the Blytheswood.
03:55But now, obviously, we've got Inner Loam and Kielbrook, there's a couple of Michelin stars there.
03:59There's loads of different rosette places that you can work in.
04:02So for a young chef to come through Glasgow, nowadays it's definitely a place to go.
04:06I think when I was back, when I first started, a lot of chefs were leaving Glasgow to either go to Ferlies up in Perth
04:14or going to London, quite a lot of chefs went to London or even further afield.
04:18But now there's a lot of chefs coming back.
04:20I know a lot of guys I've worked with down south who are Scottish who have moved back to Glasgow now.
04:25So it's definitely getting stronger and stronger, the food scene in Glasgow, every year.
04:29There's so much variation now.
04:32Go down Finiston, you can get almost any sort of cuisine anywhere you go.
04:37So it's definitely moving up and it's getting better, the scene in Glasgow, I would say.
04:43We just want to be there at the top, basically.
04:45There's lots of things that have contributed to that change over the last 10 years.
04:50Part of it's people going away elsewhere, coming back with new ideas.
04:53That's helped give a spark of creativity.
04:56But one of the essential building blocks is the fact that there's been a greater level of connection with the produce that surrounds us.
05:03You know, like the seafood and the meats that we can get and that we can make sing here.
05:09Is it a joy to work with that kind of side of things as a chef?
05:12When you get things through into the kitchen, you're like, yeah, I know how to make something really spectacular.
05:17Yeah, definitely. We've got the best produce in the world in Scotland.
05:20Maybe in Scotland and the north of England, we've got the best produce that you can get from farm to sea.
05:26So it makes your job easy.
05:29You get it and all you've got to do is cook it nicely, serve it with a sauce or a butter or something.
05:35And that's it. That's all you need to do. You've just got to let the produce sink.
05:39So it makes your job pretty easy as a chef.
05:44Even when I worked down south for a couple of years, we were getting produce from Scotland.
05:48All of our seafood basically was coming from the Atlantic in Scotland.
05:53It's just highly sought after throughout the whole world, basically.
05:57I think we export something like 90% of the fish we catch is exported throughout the world.
06:01So, you know, for us to have that on our doorstep is just tremendous, basically.