I don’t want to say that January is the worst month of the year but…it is often pretty grim. Apart from Burns Night (and, from a food perspective, there are definitely better holidays), there’s really nothing to look forward to apart from more gloomy weather. To combat this, I decided to write about the basic white girl’s and the hipster’s favourite meal of the day – brunch. I’m a big fan of a cooked breakfast, and as students I think we all know the miraculous effect of a fry up after a big night out.
Firstly, we have The Brunch Club in Finnieston, well-known in the West End and arguably the most stereotypical brunch place one could wish for, serving a variety of sweet and savoury breakfast options, cocktails, and smoothies. I got the Veggie breakfast, which I liked – the inclusion of halloumi in a cooked breakfast always gets bonus points from me. As someone who easily gets the egg ick when I’m not the person cooking it, I also have to give them credit for cooking the egg well. However, I found the spinach a bit odd as although it was described as seasoned, it just tasted of, well, spinach, and was raw rather than wilted as I expected. The atmosphere is busy and at the risk of sounding too Gen-Z, I would say quite a millennial crowd, to suit the menu offerings. Overall, The Brunch Club is a pretty solid choice in the West End, as it’s not too expensive and does well on both the atmosphere and food fronts.
In order to add some geographical variety to this list, I decided to make a trip into Southside in the hope of going to Bramble, which frequently comes up as one of the best places to get brunch in Glasgow. Despite its reputation, it doesn’t take bookings, and we were told it would be an hour wait for a table when we got there. Instead, we headed to The Glad Café, a vegan café and music venue on Pollokshaws Road. An entirely vegan menu is always exciting, and I opted for the full cooked breakfast as I normally do. While the breakfast was a decent portion and featured both lorne and links veggie sausage as well as haggis, I left feeling underwhelmed as the food took nearly an hour to come and my partner’s portion of waffles was very meagre.
Despite the disappointment of the Glad Café, I was much happier with another fully vegan spot, also out with the West End – the Glasvegan Café next to St Enoch Shopping Centre. Although the café is very small, their menu has a wide variety of breakfast and lunch options, as well as a selection of cakes and sweet treats. The cooked breakfast I got from here gets the top spot on this list – vegan black pudding, sausages, and haggis accompanied by homemade beans and mushrooms, which were beautifully seasoned with lemony notes and converted me to a mushroom lover – kind of a big deal. I went a while ago, so I can’t fully remember how expensive it was, but I’d say the Glasvegan is absolutely worth a visit because its spot as the best cooked breakfast I’ve had in Glasgow remains unchallenged – so far.
Definitely the cheapest option on this list, but also the least classy, is Spoons. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – you just can’t beat the value. I’m a bit scared of how they cook their eggs, so I went for the vegan breakfast but with the addition of halloumi, and I did not leave disappointed. Getting a full breakfast and a (refillable!) coffee for under a tenner is also something no student can argue with. The only challenge with this will be getting there before noon, which is when they stop serving their breakfast menu.
There are still many more brunch places in Glasgow I want to try, and while some of the places on this list leave something to be desired, there are also a couple of gems. A full cooked breakfast is something I feel is difficult to replicate at home, especially as a student and even more especially as a hungover student. So go out, get yourself that breakfast, and I promise you’ll feel all the better for doing so.
Evie McCabe
(Vegetarian Eats as a UofG Student is a monthly column by Evie McCabe, exclusive to qmunicatemagazine.co.uk. Stay tuned for more instalments!)
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