Mr Foodie We recently ventured into Porter & Sons, or is it Rye & Co? No, it’s Porter & Rye, the latest venture from Kained Holdings (The Finnieston, Lebowski’s, Crafty Pig), which fits in effortlessly to the Finnieston strip where The Taste of Punjab used to be.
I wish we had some photos of the Taste of Punjab for comparison as it looks rather different now – a mezzanine floor has been added; there are filament lightbulbs, bare brick, metalwork and a big craft beer selection thus ticking all the hipster boxes, but it does look rather cosy in a sparse sort of way.
Thankfully it seems they know their stuff, on the way to our table we passed a dry ageing cabinet showing off their wares – meat!
It was quite late and we were seated between a table with three children (but they were occupied with colouring books and well behaved) and another with two chefs from one of Glasgow’s finest restaurants, who were just finishing their meal and it seems they enjoyed it!
Link to clear menu. The star attraction is the 28oz porterhouse for sharing between 2. NB:prices for the steaks are not listed and we had a bit of a gripe with this as when our waitress brought the prices over to take our order we felt under a bit of pressure to make a decision. We went for a rump steak and burger as we are continuing our burger odyssey, pilgrimage or penance (you decide!) of Glasgow.
The bread came with salted butter, it was decent but not the most-exciting.
To drink, we had some robust beer from the Eden brewery just outside St.Andrews in Fife. It was strong but sweet and drinkable.
And a more local choice from the West brewery – an amber coloured, light, clean IPA aimed at lager drinkers probably.
We’d had a wee bite to eat earlier in the day so knew we weren’t going to manage 3 courses so we shared a venison starter – there wasn’t much of it, just a single bit of meat each as we were sharing, and it was a bit chewy for venison. It was still pretty nice but despite what we’d heard about molecular gastronomy it wasn’t that wacky or Heston Blumenthal-esque.
They offer you a choice of knives for your mains. A novel idea, but it was a bit pointless with the burger as we didn’t use it once, well I suppose you could use it – it was a big burger after all but we’re gluttons who enjoy a challenge.
The burger was decent – it was chargrilled, a bit dry and overcooked though. Although they’d asked how we wanted our steak done they didn’t give us the option with the burger. 🙁
I also requested truffle butter with it, which should be a strong stand-out flavour but I couldn’t taste it AT ALL. 🙁
So the burger wasn’t anywhere near as moist and juicy as the Meathammer burgers we’d eaten at Nice ‘n’ Sleazies recently, but on a brighter note the bone-marrow macaroni cheese was excellent. No idea if there really was bone marrow in there but whatever was in it tasted really good. Mrs Foodie now dreams of huge bowls of this mac and cheese.
We asked for a blue steak and it was cooked rare – it was pretty good but wasn’t quite as blue as we wanted and wasn’t as tasty as the steak we received at the Taynuilt hotel just a few weeks earlier. We also asked for porter and bacon butter with this, but it was difficult to tell if there was any porter in there…the hand cut chips were good too but again not as good as the ones we had in Taynuilt.
Sadly we were too full for dessert so the peanut butter ice-cream, dark Belgian chocolate ganache and “textures of raspberries” shall all have to wait until next time…
Total cost £45.85 for a main each with sides, 1 starter and 2 beers and overall, the food was very good but not amazing (well apart from the heavenly Mac and Cheese), though we did only have 1.5 courses each so a return visit for 3 courses may be on the cards. The beer selection was impressive and the staff were friendly and helpful. The toilet was clean but access-wise the toilet location isn’t that wheelchair-friendly.
TL;DR
+ good steak and burger (but not the best we’ve had in either category this year)
+ top macaroni cheese
+ good beer selection
+ knife menu is quirky
+ cosy in a sparse hipster way
– price of cuts not on menu so you may feel under a bit of pressure to pick when presented with the chalkboard
– not given option of how we wanted burger cooked; truffles still in a field in Italy…
– toilet not the most disabled-friendly
