Art Lovers' Café

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• What are these?

• Average price 2 courses: £11.50
• House wine: £12.95 per bottle

• Hitlisted
• High point: Food matches beautiful surroundings
• Low point: Only open for lunch
• Food served: Mon-Sun noon-4pm
• Private dining: Up to 100 covers
• Open since: 1996
• Also offers: Vegetarian options (at least 25% of menu), Childrens portions, Childrens high chairs, Wheelchair access

The List's Eating & Drinking Guide 2008 is now in the shops.

This review is from the 2007 edition.

On a walk around Glasgow's House for an Art Lover, a mansion based on Charles Rennie Mackintosh's drawings and not built till 1990, the serenity of Bellahouston Park might lull even the highest of blood pressures to a gentle sense of calm. Even inside the venue's busy Art Lover's Café - often full of Mackintosh pilgrims - the noise levels rarely seem to rise much above a hum. Given its setting, the café's designers could have easily gone into Mackintosh rose-stencil overload. Instead, white walls are punctuated primarily by two arched windows that look out over the gardens. The menu, full of seasonal flavours, steers clear of fussiness. A simple diced blue cheese salad arrives as a neat pile of well-dressed leaves dotted with creamy cheese. And two golden salmon fish-cakes come atop a luscious buttery sauce with some just-wilted baby spinach. Even the more robust dishes, such as pressed belly of pork or seared scallops with Stornaway black pudding, are elegantly presented. Be sure to take up the sweet-natured staff up on dessert: a chilled vanilla rice pudding with raspberry lemon thyme jam is a delectably grown-up version of a well-loved old school favourite.