The Kitchen Restaurant

This review appears in the The List's Eating & Drinking Guide 2008 – in the shops now or buy online.

Set in the magnificent Pollok Country Park, Pollok House – an elegant 18th century country mansion beautifully maintained by the National Trust for Scotland – seems a world away from the city that surrounds it. There's an Upstairs Downstairs quality to the experience here: take a tour of the house (free November to March), then pop down to The Kitchen Restaurant and eat in the same room where domestic servants worked to feed their masters in the mansion above you. It's full of original features, such as the huge cast iron ranges and gorgeous ceramic tiling, and you might also expect the menu to go in for similar period detail – but, apart from a proper old-fashioned plum and ginger crumble full of zip and zing, the meals are more suited to a modern café bar. The lentil soup is full-bodied and so too is the enormous round of goat's cheese with salad. An asparagus tart main course, though, has only a few thin, watery vegetables for flavour and is served with cold, hard potatoes. The home baking, with giant fluffy scones a speciality, is justifiably popular here and reason alone to visit.

• High point: Amazing surroundings
• Low point: Unseasonal menu