The best restaurant to open in Glasgow last year is now Michelin Guide recommended

Margo, the new restaurant from the team at Ox and Finch, who brought Ka Pao to the West End, has been included in the Michelin Guide for Great Britain & Ireland for 2025. The news was announced today, with Margo joining its sister restaurants in the latest recommendations from the guide’s inspectors. The team described the news, received ten weeks after opening, as “astonishing”.

Fallachan Kitchen, a fine dining chef’s table restaurant beside SWG3 was also announced as a new entry for 2025, with Gaga Bar and Kitchen completing the latest Glasgow edition. The update comes ahead of the launch event for the 2025 edition of the Michelin Guide, which will take place at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum next month with every chef in the UK and Ireland with a Michelin star invited to attend.

Margo is described in the guide: “As a sister restaurant to Ox and Finch and Ka Pao, you can probably guess what you’re getting with Margo: a bustling, efficiently run restaurant that’s deservedly popular thanks to its great buzz and flavour-packed, generously priced dishes. It’s a cavernous place spread over two floors, with a semi-industrial feel and its lively atmosphere enhanced by the open kitchen. The sharing plates are a satisfying synthesis of Mediterranean cooking and Scottish produce, borne out in dishes like red prawn agnolotti and ham hough croquettes. Below, you’ll find Sebb’s – a cocktail bar with wood-fired grilling.”

Margo is a high ceilinged, open, former retail space that has been refitted to seat 138 diners across an expansive main dining room and upper mezzanine. The team has worked with Stuart Black of Mosaic Architecture and Design to create bespoke furniture and carpentry for the space. Metalwork and traditional clay render are mixed with ceramic and terracotta tiles and salvaged light fittings, resulting in a warm and welcoming space with a modern industrial edge.

A large open kitchen with counter seating gives guests the opportunity to watch Margo’s chefs at work, while banquettes and booths offer a dining setting for groups.

The kitchen is led by Glasgow chef Robin Aitken, who joined Ox and Finch in 2014. After a period of travelling and working abroad, Aitken returned as part of the senior team leading Ka Pao in the West End to its first Michelin Bib Gourmand, and contributed to Ox and Finch retaining its Bib Gourmand for the 10th year.

Aitken’s impressive menu includes snacks, small plates and sharing dishes with a flavour-led approach that focuses on Scottish seafood, meat butchered in-house, and bread and pasta made from scratch.

Guests can begin their meal with snacks such as smoked haddock churros, manchego and saffron; focaccia with prawn head butter; beef tartare, grilled onion salad, crispy potato and crème fraîche; beetroot, Yellison goat’s curd and cocoa tortelloni and West Coast crab tart with bitter leaf salad.

To follow, a selection of larger dishes will range from skate wing with kumquat kosho, trout roe and green peppercorns to feasting-style plates including dry-aged sirloin on the bone with café de Paris butter and half Creedy Carver duck with liver parfait, marmalade and toast.

To drink, a cocktail list includes signature frozen martinis, yoghurt punch and classic serves given a modern twist through techniques such as fat-washing and carbonation. Margo will offer Scoop’s most comprehensive wine list to date, with classic fine wines sitting alongside natural and biodynamic bottles from small, independent producers.

Chef Jonathan MacDonald, who has, alongside Daniel Spurr, built the local restaurant group from the success of Ox and Finch, says Margo shares the same ethos of “relaxed, accessible and fun, alongside a focus on quality. Whilst retaining lots of the features that have made Ox and Finch so popular for the last decade, Margo will be bigger and bolder.”

“We’ll be pushing things further in the kitchen, baking our own breads, making fresh pastas and also doing some in-house butchery. There’ll also be a larger, more adventurous wine list, which the team have been sourcing from a range of great suppliers. We’re very excited to be able to share what we’ve been working on with Glasgow, and we’ve also got some exciting plans coming.”

Margo, 68 Miller St, Glasgow G1 1DT

Michelin Guide 2025 recommendations announced in January

• Amari, Brighton and Hove Spanish
• BALOCI, Birmingham Asian and Western
• Briar, Bruton Contemporary, Sharing
• Circa Totnes, Totnes Modern British
• DA COSTA, Bruton Italian
• Dishes, Prestatyn British Contemporary
• Fallachan Kitchen, Glasgow Modern Cuisine
• FIFTY TWO, Harrogate Modern Cuisine, Creative
• Fonda, London Mexican
• Great Bustard, Great Durnford Modern British
• Hem, Warwick Modern Cuisine
• Horse & Groom, Bourton on the HillTraditional British
• Jericho, Plungar Modern Cuisine
• Le Vin Perdu, Ashburton French
• Lucky Khao, Brighton and Hove Thai
• Margo, Glasgow Mediterranean Cuisine
• North Street Kitchen, Fowey Seafood
• OTHER, Bristol Sharing
• Row on 5, London Modern Cuisine
• Satori, Birmingham Japanese
• Starling, Esher Modern British
• The Braywood, BrayModern British
• The Fanny Talbot, Barmouth Modern British
• The Lamb Inn, Oxford English
• The Old Deanery, Ripon Modern British
• The Old Manse of Blair Restaurant, Blair Atholl Modern Cuisine
• The Plough, Wombleton Traditional Cuisine
• Three Darlings, London World Cuisine
• Wildflowers, London Mediterranean Cuisine