Glasgow, Fish & Seafood Restaurant Guide

Shuttered in September 2020 and marked as ‘Permanently Closed’ on Google, this city-centre fish and seafood institution is one of the city’s best-known restaurants thanks in large part to its Art Deco interior, created in 1935 by the same craftsmen who fitted out the Queen Mary. According to an August 2022 report in the Glasgow Evening Times, it will re-open… but no-one seems to know when.

Derek Marshall’s “always excellent” – “if slightly difficult to find” – basement seafood spot celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. It’s particularly noted for its “interesting good-value lunch”.

This “superb” Glasgow institution from Ryan James makes brilliant use of a classic Victorian interior (one of the city’s more historic interiors). “The only criticism is that the menu is on the ‘traditional’ side” – although that might seem appropriate to the site – “but you cannot fault the execution and the attention to detail”.

This intriguing and cramped venue (no surprise its owner is an architect) is “full of fun and just the freshest, simplest food – whole crabs and great fish” – a formula that has carried the Finnieston original since 2009 (it added a sibling this year, see also). “Be prepared to be very close to fellow diners, but it’s so worth it for the totally awesome food”.

John Macleod’s late April 2022 newcomer – sibling to his popular Finnieston original – occupies the same beautiful, art deco Botanics garage building as Ka Pao (see also). It opened too late for feedback in our annual diners’ poll, but in a June 2022 visit, Rosalind Erskine for The Scotsman declared: “what made the first Crabshakk stand the test of time can be found here too – quality food, cooked well and served with a smile – making it easy to imagine it soon being as big a Glasgow institution as the original”.

The team behind Cail Bruich opened a seafood restaurant in Hyndland in March 2022 – their fourth site overall – serving up fresh Scottish produce with Champagne and cocktails. No reports as yet in our late spring annual diners’ poll, but in The Scotsman, Gaby Soutar reviewed it as an “excellently-named” newcomer, praising its rather lovely interior, with a smallish bar downstairs and a smart mezzanine level, where you can see their coppery fish scale wall art. On-the-bone Shetland plaice was “downy and perfect, like eating oceanic candyfloss”.