Pickled Ginger opened at 512 Argyle Street, on the outer fringe of the Finnieston food and drink scene, in May 2015.

A long-standing fixture of the food scene in the West End has closed after 10 years. Japanese restaurant Pickled Ginger specialised in sushi dishes, ramen, teriyaki and other Asian inspired dishes alongside Japanese beers and sake.

The team made the announcement this morning saying: “We’re extremely sad to be posting such sad news about the closure of our restaurant, we’ve tried everything to keep our restaurant open but it’s just time to say goodbye.

“We cant’ begin to tell you how much we appreciate your custom over the years and it’s been truly wonderful serving you all.”

The announcement added: “Thank you so much for your support, custom and well wishes over the past few years. We’ve had to make the extremely unfortunate decision to close our restaurant due to circumstances that are outwith our control.”

Pickled Ginger was opened by Kevin Campbell and Toni Carbajosa of Glasgow hospitality group C&C. Their other ventures include Rioja and Halloumi.

Pickled Ginger described the restaurant on their website, saying: “Located in Finnieston, Glasgow, we are perfectly situated between the West End of Glasgow and the city centre, making us the best restaurant to enjoy Asian-inspired dining, cocktails, Japanese beers & Sake and don’t worry about the good vibes… we’ll throw them in for free!”

Our sister publication, The Scotsman, reviewed Pickled Ginger in their first year of opening in 2015, when Japanese restaurants were less ubiquitous in the city than they are today. “After a meal at Pickled Ginger, Glasgow’s newest sushi restaurant, you learn a few things about table manners in Japan. You can, if you like, eat sushi with your hands. Once you’ve finished, you can set your chopsticks across the soy saucer, perpendicular to the bar, to let staff know you’re done. Dunking your sushi rice-first into soy sauce is a faux pas; doing the same with wasabi might be something worse.

“Eating at Pickled Ginger isn’t necessarily complicated or fussy, but, if you set great stock by looking like you know what you’re doing, then the dos and don’ts on the A3 paper menus are pretty helpful.

“There’s an odd – but not uncommon – tension between the observance of sushi etiquette and the restaurant’s clubby interior, a wash of pale maple and glowing reddish lanterns amid thick black and orange lines. Pickled Ginger is a place to socialise. It’s a little too compact to expect the sharpening of chef’s knives and the clinking of glasses to be the loudest noises you’ll hear during dinner most nights. On some weekends, DJs play simmering house and disco, and sloshing cocktails are served alongside thick black slates of raw fish and rice.

“After a serving of miso soup sprinkled with spring onions (£3), we ordered a couple of plates of tempura squid (£7): three battered, rust-coloured coils on a giant, pillowy lettuce leaf. The squid was slightly firmer than I’d have liked, but too soft and it would have been dominated by the batter around it, which was just about crisp enough. Next came the pork and tofu egg gyozas (£5), which were close to spectacular. They were big, crunchy, chewy and slicked with a faint brush of oil. The rich, spicy flavours inside hung around for a while, but there was no rush.

“As delicious as they were, the gyozas’ heavyweight taste turned out to be a poor choice before sushi, whose flavours are more subtle. We were presented with thick, finger-length slabs of tuna and fatty salmon sashimi (£7.50; £6), accompanied by smaller helpings of salmon nigiri (£3.30) and avocado maki (£2.50). It was beautifully presented. If we hadn’t begun to pick at the flesh off the slate with our chopsticks right away, it might have been whisked off down the road to a glass cabinet at the Kelvingrove.”