Watch: Margo is the most exciting and ambitious restaurant opening in Glasgow this year
Margo, a new restaurant from the team at Ox and Finch, who brought Ka Pao to the West End, will open on Miller Street in the city centre on Monday.
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 will be 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 new 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 built his 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.”
GlasgowWorld visited Margo to find out what to expect from the new restaurant, you can watch the video with Jonathan above. Margo is at 68 Miller Street, G1 1DT