Il Pavone

The List's Eating & Drinking Guide 2008 is now in the shops. This review is taken from the 2007 edition.

The grand peacock sitting above Princes Square's entrance, overlooking Buchanan Street's shoppers, gives its name in Italian to Il Pavone, whose diners can watch those inside Glasgow's most upmarket shopping centre. It's a favourite daytime haunt for trendy parents, with courtyard tables in the mall's basement allowing them to enjoy their meal while letting the children run about the central floor area. The restaurant aims above the standard fare of most Italian restaurants, providing high-quality food in extremely generous portions. Starters include thick slices of Parma ham accompanied by chunks of melon, and a caprese salad of creamy mozzarella drizzled with olive oil and served with tomatoes and sprigs of peppery basil leaves. The first-rate pizza caruso has strips of tender chicken and sweet roast peppers with little puddles of molten mozzarella on a thin, crispy base. Seafood and fish dishes are a house speciality, evidenced in a pan-fried, flaky fillet of moist salmon served on a bed of courgettes, mange-tout, onions and peppers, with tiny baked new potatoes on the side. Desserts focus on flashy ice-cream: coppa vesuvio comprises vanilla scoops topped with crushed meringue, doused in Bailey's liqueur.

• High point: Princes Square people-watching
• Low point: Princes Square prices