Hummingbird

This review appears in the The List's Eating & Drinking Guide 2009 – in the shops now or buy online.

Just opened at time of going to press in the former Hallion Club, g1 Group’s latest baby, Hummingbird, is a big, brazen, totally over-the-top, multi-storeyed pleasure dome of eating, drinking, partying and music. According to its PR blurb, it aims to be 'an avant garde Glasgow restaurant and club with an eclectic soul and passionate heart'. Designed by the much-respected Graven Images, Hummingbird offers a non-stop indulgence of decadence centred around party pods (available to hire for two to three hours with drinks and nibbles from £10 per person); a basement Café del Mar-style beach bar; karaoke pods; dressing up boxes; Wii rooms; hot tubs; massage tables; live webcams and private dining rooms with cocktail trollies. In terms of interiors it’s anything goes, with a fantastical smorgasbord of styles and themes from frescoed ceilings to religious artifacts to African art and exotic glassware. It probably needs to be seen to be believed. Food-wise the anything-goes theme continues and you can find yourself eating 'Scooby snacks' (hotdog with mustard and fries, £5.25) at the beach in the basement or mussels with coconut and coriander (£4.25) at one of the long tables in the bar on the ground floor – or you could sample the sushi, Mexican or soul food sharing plates in one of the private party pods. Add to that burgers, steaks, curries, sweets and even candy floss, and certainly eclectic is the word. Confoundingly, Hummingbird is either a monumental disaster in the making or an audaciously genius plan for g1 to further dominate Glasgow’s twentysomething social scene.

• High point: Never been anything like it before
• Low point: For eclectic, read confused