Something special

Striped Bass is a seafood and Champagne restaurant in central Glasgow. We sent our best eaters to find out more.

In the heart of Glasgow's shopping district, on blue-lit Buchanan Street, is Princes Square. This upmarket shopping mall, housed in a sandstone building dating from the 1840s, blends in so well it is not that easy to spot from the street (except for the giant iron peacock above the rooftops).

But this is not your average shopping centre, those brightly lit, homogeneous compounds with absolutely no character. In fact they don't call it that: Princes Square is a ‘speciality leisure centre.' It still offers shops, bars and restaurants, interconnected by lifts and elevators, but it does so with style.

Among the familiar high street shops are designers such as Jo Malone, Vivien Westwood and Ted Baker. There is no ‘food hall' and the restaurants aren't the sort of places where you pick up a try and glide past fridges of sad looking sandwiches.

Striped Bass for instance, a newly opened Champagne and seafood restaurant on the second floor.

So we have Champagne and we have seafood, and Striped Bass is rather obsessive about both. Regarding the former, Striped Bass is in fact only Louis Roedere Champagne Bar in the United Kingdom.

And as you'd expect, there are some excellent vintages on offer, as well as Roedere's famous Cristal. Also on the menu is a luxury cocktail made with Cristal Rosé 2000, Remy Martin XO and an Angostura infused sugar cube.

And at a whopping £800 a go, the reasons for calling it ‘Grounds for Divorce' become clear.

As for the seafood, in these days...

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• By : Sally Toms
• In : Best of Scotland
• Issue : 41
• Page : 30
• Words : 652