Recipe: Make Café Gandolfi’s Cullen skink at home

Café Gandolfi is a monument to Glasgow style that also serves excellent poached eggs at breakfast – order with Stornoway black pudding or smoked salmon.

The furniture maker Tim Stead, a graduate of the Glasgow School of Art, was asked to make the sinewy, sculpture-like yet comfortable tables and chairs. The furniture is even more beautiful now than it was 43 years ago.

Glass painter John Clark installed “A Flock of Fishes”, the two stained glass panels that bring colour to the big main windows.

When the Grand Hotel at Charing Cross was closed in October 1968 and demolished to make way for the new motorway, its distinctive wooden revolving doors were saved and later moved to Café Gandolfi. They are now over 100 years old.

Original owner Iain Mackenzie was a photographer, naming the café Gandolfi after a camera. You can see his pictures of Glasgow cafes from the 1970s still on the walls of this local classic.

Current owner Seumas MacInnes, custodian of the café since the mid-1990s and part of the team since 1983, doesn’t believe in standing still. The kitchen continues to advance a modern Scottish menu. Evening dishes include steak tartare with brioche, smoked haddock risotto with salsa verde, moules frites or charred leeks with onion mousse, romesco and pistachio. There’s a cocktail menu to enjoy in the bar upstairs.

Recipe: Café Gandolfi’s Cullen Skink

Here’s how to create one of the most popular dishes from the Merchant City favourite at home.

Ingredients

Serves 4

4 medium potatoes, peeled & diced

300ml double cream

300ml whole milk

250ml water

300g smoked haddock

60g butter

1 onion, finely chopped

1 tbsp olive oil

Pinch of mace or nutmeg

Black pepper

Method

In a saucepan large enough to take all the ingredients, sauté the onion in butter and oil until soft.

Add the water to the pan along with the potatoes and simmer for 5 minutes.

Stir in the milk and cream and simmer for a further 5-10 minutes until the potatoes are tender.

Cut the haddock into 2cm squares and drop into the soup. Continue to cook gently for 10 minutes.

Check seasoning and add the mace or nutmeg.