Glasgow restaurant named as one of the Good Food Guide's longest standing restaurants

The Good Food Guide, Britain’s foremost lead on food and drink recommendations, has recently Gamba as one of its longest standing restaurants on the guide.

Gamba, a seafood restaurant on West George Street, has been open in the city since 1998, and has held its place on the guide for over 20 years now. This is no easy feat either, as restaurants are constantly coming and going from the Good Food Guide since it launched in 1952.

Gamba’s chef and owner is Derek Marshall, a Glasgow man from the East End. He left school with no qualifications and joined a youth training programme, the start of a culinary journey of discovery that would take him to the Channel Islands, the French Alps and Spain.

The Good Food Guide praise Derek’s innovative take on seafood, particularly his piquant crab and ginger soup bobbing with tiny prawn dumplings, which as the guide says “was an instant hit with Glaswegians when he started serving it back in the day.”

The Guide listing for Gamba reads: “Gamba is Spanish for prawn, although Marshall scours the globe for culinary inspiration, serving Scottish lobster thermidor and lemon sole meunière alongside whole blackened bream with teriyaki prawns or roast monkfish with Puy lentil dhal, smoked haddock, vanilla yoghurt and sesame rice.

“Fans and first-timers come here for astute and well-balanced seafood cookery leavened with just enough imaginative twists to keep the taste buds alert.

“For the final flourish, well-sourced cheeses and a cluster of luscious old-school favourites such as sticky toffee pudding or raspberry and vanilla cheesecake are guaranteed to satisfy – although liquorice crème brûlée with milk sorbet sounds even more tantalizing. A substantial list of international wines from Corney & Barrow gives fish-friendly whites top billing, with bottles from £27.”

Other Scottish restaurants including on the long-standing list of Good Food Guide restaurants include: Kinloch Lodge on the Isle of Skye and Contini and Valvonna & Crolla in Edinburgh.