The Mallard
333 Great Western Rd, Glasgow
0141 339 4111
Lunch/Dinner: £20-£30
Food rating: 3/10
WHAT do the words "crab cannelloni" mean to you? I’m imagining handmade pasta stuffed with fresh crabmeat, and I’m liking the sound of the (cryptic) "sweetcorn" and (more forthcoming) "pickled fennel" that come with it. It sounds like a fine dining offering, although the new Mallard in Glasgow describes itself as a "gastropub" and "neighbourhood eatery". When the dish is put before me, I think at first that someone has made a mistake. It’s nothing like my idea of crab cannelloni; not in a pub, not in a swanky restaurant.
A yellow mush that might be polenta turns out to be creamed corn, a dais for something that looks like a kilted sausage but which turns out to be partially peeled aubergine rolled round a beige cylinder. The latter, if it weren’t faintly fishy, would remind me of the spongiform "chicken sausages" you get in airline breakfasts. Black-flecked corn kernels, their sugar long since turned to starch, a debris of rocket leaves, and an unexceptional pesto that looks like a wintry nighttime puddle because it sits on a black plate, decorate the aubergine "cannelloni". What possesses a chef to partner crab with pesto? The only thing that’s missing in this deracinated concoction of clashing elements is the kitchen sink. In retrospect I realise that this dish was totemic; it embodied the approach of this kitchen: airily imprecise descriptions; sloppy assemblies; no evidence of a chef training with any depth or rigour; ungrounded ambition that outstrips the ingredient buyer’s budget.
But for the time being I’m still trying to make sense of another tumble of ingredients on a black plate, this time the "pigeon, black pudding croquette, smoked carrot purée, onion jam". The sliced pigeon breast seeps bloody stains onto the carrot, which is smeared on the plate as though someone had slipped on a mango smoothie spilled on the pavement. A greasy ball of breaded black pudding has a twice-fried odour. Shredded leeks, in hues from raw green, through white, to borderline burnt, smell oily too. A thick, shiny brown substance forms a jelly on the plate. This presentation must please someone in the kitchen, but it isn’t easy on the eye. My appetite shrivels. We can’t pick up any smoky element in the carrots; the meat has a stringy, almost lacquered texture, as though it had been overcooked then reheated. We try to identify the onion "jam" and find only shreds of something very like marmalade.
Are we just unlucky so far? No, there’s more of the same to come. Another smear of orange purée, pumpkin this time, supports beer-braised beef short ribs so squeakily tough and dry you can understand why someone felt the need to partially cover them in more of the lustrous, brown, preternaturally thick gravy and a handful of fried carrot chips. Charred batons of shallot, and fibrous kale of the type cows would have difficulty chewing, are almost as hard work as the meat.
But the ribs, we discover, are positively refined compared to the pig’s cheek. Seriously, if you mixed pre-cooked cheeks, pre-boiled new potatoes, frozen peas, bacon lardons, and quartered mushrooms into a packet gravy mix it would look something like this, only at the Mallard we get yet more rocket on top. And the Mallard wants £13 for this uncouth, crude, slap-dash ensemble. That’s neighbourhood pricing for you – not. Because the Mallard inherited a pizza oven, you can also get this short rib stuck on a pizza.
For pudding there are pears, presumably so rock-hard prior to baking as to be incapable of softening, floating in watery brown sugar juices under a crumble so short on sugar and butter that it tastes of burnt flour. Thick custard, unsubtly heavy with cinnamon, comes with it. Chocolate and salted caramel tart, its pastry anaemic and soft, sticks to the soft palate and teeth. So nondescript is its accompanying cherry compote, if you tasted it blind you would struggle to identify it.
What I want from my local pub is simple, straightforward food, freshly cooked, at a price level that encourages repeat dining. The Mallard has flown off in quite another direction.
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