COLIN Clydesdale tells a brilliant story about the day two people held up the old off-sales at his Ubiquitous Chip, in Ashton Lane.

“We got a very panicked phone call that the off-sales had just been held up and that two guys had stolen a bottle of something expensive”, he says. “Someone runs into the kitchen to tell them what’s happened, and all the kitchen guys run into the off-sales, but the two guys have fled.

“Every chef ran out to chase them and they just about managed to catch them, but the two jumped on a bus on University Avenue. So the chefs stood in front of the bus and stopped it. The police are meantime interviewing the woman in the off-sales, who’s just been robbed. She’s a bit freaked-out by the whole thing. Then the police radio goes off and they tell her they have to go – ‘there’s a bus been hijacked’.

“The chefs are telling the bus driver, ‘the guys who’ve robbed us are on your bus’. The driver’s going, ‘b*gger off, I’m not letting you on!’ And then the police show up…”

The episode is one of many that have attached themselves to the Chip, a Glasgow institution which has been in operation for a very long time: 51 years, in fact, dating back to January 11, 1971, when Colin’s father, Ronnie, took the bold step of launching a venture that would champion quality Scottish produce.

The Chip was initially located in Ruthven Lane before moving to Ashton Lane in 1976. It remains a remarkably sociable place, reflecting Ronnie’s own words: “There is almost no better joy than sitting around a table with people.” As the Glasgow Herald observed in January 1990: “This is a place of bustle and high spirits; there are often big, jovial party tables.”

More business deals than can possibly be counted have been struck at the Chip’s tables. First dates have taken place here, marriage proposals have been made and engagements and weddings and landmark birthdays celebrated.

Legend has it that one old lady, long in the habit of falling asleep over a meal, did so again one night, but this time she never woke up. The couple she was with, it is said, continued with their meal and had a malt whisky to celebrate her life.

“Merriment and mischief by our customers was de rigueur in the Chip through the 1980s and 1990s”, Colin reflects. “It still is, of course, but back then it was something else. Rambunctious conversations, an unquenchable thirst for alcohol – brandy, port and Irish coffees in particular – cigar smoking, and legendary levels of debauchery.

“The norms of behaviour were pushed to new levels back then in the Chip. One well-known television newsreader, who shall forever remain anonymous, would often get wildly intoxicated across an afternoon, get picked up by the studio car at 5.30pm and be on air for 6pm. A truly miraculous feat.”

There’s the story of Donald Dewar dining at the Chip with the then Nato secretary-general, George Robertson. Dewar happily settled for the house wine but the Nato bodyguard, in thrall to his slightly more extravagant tastes, asked for the vintage claret.

And then there’s the story of how Marina O’Loughlin, today one of Britain’s best-known restaurant critics, who, back when she was working as a waitress in her earlier days, was dismissed from the Chip for, she recalls, “allowing some charming customers to fill me full of tequila”.

There was the time, in the late 1980s, when that noted bon viveur, the Hillhead MP Roy Jenkins, sampled the Chip’s fabled wine list in the company of the London journalist, Bruce Anderson. “There was a Petrus for under £100, a bargain even back then”, Anderson wrote in his Spectator wine column a few months ago. “I gave Roy the good news. He protested that despite his reputation, he was happy to drink modest wines. I am told that he often said that, and never meant it. As I remember, it was as good as it should have been.” The restaurant itself, Anderson said, was “excellent”.

When Ronnie Clydesdale and his business partner, Ian Brydon, opened in Ruthven Lane, Glasgow had only a handful of notable restaurants – Rogano, The Gay Gordon, and Restaurant One-o-One among them. The latter, at No 101 Hope Street, had counted Sinatra and Dietrich among its celebrity customers.

There were Spanish restaurants (Rapallo) and Italian and Chinese and Indian, even an African one (Safari). Over on Byres Road – Glasgow’s answer to King’s Road, said one contemporary journalist, “where twin-set gentility rubs shoulders with students in Boer War trench coats” – there was the S&S Cartwheel restaurant. But something was decidedly missing.

Ronnie said in a 1971 Herald interview that he and Brydon “felt that there was a place for a restaurant like this – fairly small and informal. We were very keen on the democratic spirit of it.

“There are so many restaurants making their money without offering much originality”, he added. “We think that if a person goes out for a meal in the evening he wants something that he might not bother preparing at home. So many places are offering pre-packaged meals that are all a bit tasteless and anonymous.”

Ronnie was entirely self-taught, having learned Scottish cooking from his maternal grandmother Jeannie Turner, who had Islay connections. While doing night sentry duty during his national service he would escape into the cookhouse and create dishes for himself and his colleagues.

His son, Colin, says now: “[Back then] there were several top-end French and Italian restaurants, but they weren’t really French or Italian – they were all kind of Glaswegian and the waiters were all fake French and fake Italian. It was very traditional and a wee bit po-faced and wannabe posh, and dad didn’t want any part of that. He just wanted to cook food and provide a space where folk could be comfortable in themselves.”

The Chip rapidly became a success, aided in good measure by its proximity to Glasgow University, BBC Scotland and Western InfirmaryUniversity. The menu in 1971 included smoked Tay salmon with scrambled egg (5p) and a 6oz Aberdeen Angus sirloin (67p). A half pheasant, served with ale and cream, was £1.13.

The Chip was unusual not only in its decision to champion Scottish produce (the first dish Ronnie ever served at the Chip was Mallaig-landed squid with conger eel and bacon) but also because it made a point of specifying its provenance – a custom that is now second nature in many fashionable restaurants. “No-one else really did ‘provenance’ in the 1970s and 1980s”, says Colin.

By 1974 a favourite dish with customers was the Dublin steak – a Guinness carbonnade (£1.15) – a stew made with the dark brew and herbs. The Hebridean Carrageen with Islay malt whisky “is claimed to have all sorts of health-giving properties”, wrote The Herald’s food critic. “Island seaweed is mixed with milk, the weed then is strained to leave a kind of blancmange.”

In 1976 the Chip relocated a short distance to Ashton Lane when the owner of its Ruthven Lane premises, noting the Chip’s success, quadrupled the rent. The new home was a derelict shell but was painstakingly transformed so that, when it opened in March, “one enters by way of a cobbled courtyard covered by a glass roof”, reported The Herald. “Here there is a peaceful fountain into which customers throw coins and wish.”

Alasdair Gray was a common sight in those early days at Ashton Lane as he painted a striking mural in the courtyard. It became a nightly cabaret as he worked on the project before food and drink were set before him in payment for his labours.

The Chip flourished under Ronnie’s expert guidance, winning critical acclaim and finding favour with an increasing number of adventurous diners from Glasgow and beyond. Little wonder that Gordon Ramsay visited the Chip half-a-dozen times when he and his top chefs were carrying out research for his Amaryllis restaurant at One Devonshire.

Ronnie died in April 2010, aged 74; the operation is now run by Colin and his wife, Carol Wright, who for her part has succeeded Ronnie as the sommelier supremo.

The Chip, it is good to report, is still with us. The last couple of years, lockdown and all, have been exceedingly tough, but the old place is slowly returning to normal. “This is still such a unique place”, says Colin. “Having grown up in and around it, I’m very at ease with it but I am very aware that it means an awful lot to an awful lot of people, so it has legacy and we have to be very aware that, as it progresses and changes, it takes people with it.”

Though unwilling to “over-egg Glasgow’s ability to purloin stuff that possibly doesn’t belong to it”, he laughs as he recalls another tale from the Chip’s storied past. One night, he says, Ronnie spotted four immaculately dressed women, two in the upstairs toilet, two in the lane. The first two were lowering a peacock-backed, rattan chair (“very Seventies”, says Colin) down to their accomplices below.

“My dad said to them: ‘Could you please put that back? It doesn’t belong to you’. And he bricked the window up so that they couldn’t do it again.”