Chamber Member Martha Scoops 10/10 in Sunday Herald Restaurant Review
Published by Alan Busby on Sat 09 Jun 12 @ 22:11
Your Chamber congratulates Chamber Member Martha's 142 St Vincent Street, Glasgow on scooping 10/10 in the Sunday Herald Restaurant Review on 15 January 2012.
We are delighted to working with Martha's, to offer Chamber members the chance to network and explote one of Glasgow's newest eateries. For more information on the event CLICK HERE
Restaurant Review by Joanna Blythman, The Sunday Herald 15.01.2012
You can spend an awful lot on lunch without eating well. A takeaway sandwich or salad, and a sweet bite to finish, can easily clock up £5 a day, and it's likely to be crap. The person who thought up the idea of chilling sandwiches should be shot: refrigerating bread is a bad American habit. And you can't taste a salad when it's chilled to Siberian wintertime.
My heart sinks when I find myself in a location where all I have to choose from is that loft insulation-style bread, factory-farmed chicken, push-button cheddar, cotton-wool tomatoes and aged iceberg lettuce. Those revolting chainstore salads that taint the mouth for hours with dressings made from larger-than-life industrial ingredients, such as "lemon extract", are possibly even worse, what with their aggressive flavour profiles and fraudulent tastes.
Organised, financially prudent people take a packed lunch to work, recognising that not only do they save a fortune, they eat better too. And when I get my act together, I'm always favourably surprised by how last night's leftovers, and random bits and pieces of food from the fridge, taste pretty good the next day. But not everyone has the time or the inclination to make their own lunch, so the nearest sandwich bar has a captive audience.
With the opening of Martha's in Glasgow's office land, I sense a major breakthrough. This new takeaway/café obviously takes inspiration from the Leon chain in London, which revolutionised fast food, offering people cheap, nutritious, tasty options to be eaten on the hoof. There are Leon-like dishes - Moroccan meatballs, falafel wraps - but Martha's has developed the concept considerably, emphasising seasonality and local sourcing. What's more, the kitchen has a team of chefs cooking and baking food from scratch on the premises, much of it served hot. The result is far too good to be left to office workers. Martha's serves the most affordable, high quality, healthy food you'll find in central Glasgow.
Martha's menus are inspired by the best seasonal Scottish produce. Its suppliers are small, progressive producers. An ethical awareness shows in items like Freedom Foods chicken, free-range pork and Fairtrade beverages. It's so easy to eat healthily here, yet also have absolutely delicious food. Martha's does show a keen interest in super-nutritious, seasonal foods, but you can tell that foodies rule the roost.
We sat in; Martha's is clean-cut, spacious and modern in a bright, warm, cheery way. A feast that, in retrospect, would have served four, came in at under £30. It was all good stuff and patently ultra-fresh. Any trepidation that we were in the hands of well-meaning health freaks was blown away by the hot, char-grilled chipotle chicken with avocado salsa, which showed a mastery of flavour with its absolutely addictive smoked jalapeno chilli sauce. I haven't had a better or more generous-hearted mackerel salad, with its vibrant green spinach, golden and purple beetroot, airy quinoa, crunchy seeds and sprouts, matchsticks of sharp apple and knock-out lemon and horseradish dressing.
The pearl barley and chicken soup, a snip at £2.65, was just what you crave on a dismal winter day. Main courses come with nutty brown basmati rice and Martha's slaw, a seductively crunchy alliance of cabbage, kohlrabi and carrot in a light yogurt dressing. The warm winter salad was unstinting in its abundance, full of grilled plum tomatoes, nicely charred and roasted carrots, parsnips and celeriac on a bed of lemony borlotti beans, with crumbled feta and salsa verde on top.
The homemade lemonade is restrained in sweetness and there's a long list of herbal teas, but don't be under any illusion that Martha's is some sort of health spa. It has a pastry chef who produces dream-like wobbly panna cotta with Alphonso mango, a wicked deconstructed millionaire shortbread (with salt caramel) and spectacularly good hazelnut praline tarts with textbook short pastry.
Martha's bursts on the scene with it high standards, great palate and affordability. Much more than a sandwich bar, it's an extraordinarily useful city-centre asset to be used throughout the day, for breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea.
Martha's
142a St Vincent Street,
Glasgow
0141 248 9771
Lunch/dinner £5-12
Food rating 10/10
