Cathay Cuisine - The little known
but best Chinese Glasgow restaurant

Prepare your appetite!

Just to put you in the picture here, I'm writing this little Chinese Glasgow restaurant review whilst tucking my way through the leftover prawn crackers Tracey & I took home with us, after another stomach-expanding trip to Cathay Cuisine Glasgow, our favourite Chinese restaurant in the City (or to be more precise, Cantonese restaurant in Glasgow).

To be perfectly honest, we took them home with us because, having been presented with yet another meal there large enough to satisfy the entire first team of Glasgow Celtic Football Club, there was no other option but to ask the waiter to bag them up. Totally feeble, I know!

Trust me though, if you've been looking for a unique, hidden gem of a Chinese Glasgow restaurant, you can stop your search at Cathay Cuisine. This place is the ultimate rebuff against the idea that the best places to eat can only be found in the City Centre.

Of course it's true that the centre attracts many of the great chefs, and that much of this is because of the money and prestige you'll always associate with city centres. But the thing about Glasgow is that if you're confident enough to head out of the Big Smoke and towards the leafy suburbs a bit, you'll find that your options for a great place to eat out will actually increase & fatten up like a tasty, plump Sunday roast. Many a brilliant Chinese Glasgow restaurant outside the City Centre is often ignored by the critics, and to be frank (I thought my name was Scott...), in doing so the critics have been making a huge mistake.

We order a takeaway from, or book a table at, Cathay Cuisine Glasgow on a regular basis. Equally, we've given plenty of time to the City Centre top rated places like Dragon-i, New Loon Fung and the old stalwart Amber Regent. But for us, Cathay Cuisine Glasgow remains the best Chinese restaurant in Glasgow bar none. It's just so classy & serene, with its Charles Rennie Mackintosh design lighting up the inside (you'd think Scottish architectural trimmings and a Japanese style wooden arch bridge drawing you over a calming waterfall & pond wouldn't look right in a Chinese restaurant, but in fact it all pulls together somehow). The service is excellent despite a conspicuously modest number of staff, the menu is unparalleled in Glasgow, and the atmosphere on one of the Friday or Saturday all evening gourmet dinner dance or karaoke nights is just superb.

This fantastic Chinese Glasgow restaurant is a hotspot for birthday parties (either for kids or adults), hen nights and stag do's. I've seen many a cheaply rented limousine wind its way up the path to Cathay Cuisine Glasgow, open up its doors and let loose revellers looking to start a great night with a great Chinese meal, and what I've never seen is any of them trudging back after their meal looking as if they'd wasted their time (although I have witnessed the odd soul being rolled back into the limo because they've been too stuffed to walk!). Whilst this might sound a bit too rowdy for your liking though, here's two things to bear in mind about getting a Chinese or Indian meal in Glasgow:

1. A quiet, relaxing meal. If you want to enjoy excellent Oriental or Indian food but prefer a quieter evening, either avoid the weekends completely or book an earlier weekend table at your chosen restaurant. During the week and when these places open on the weekends, you'll find that they're pretty dead, with only a few people dotted around the restaurants and the kitchens' time taken up more with takeaway orders. So that's just the right time to enjoy a peaceful, civilised meal.

2. A lively springboard to a great night out. On the weekends however, many Glaswegians tend to head for a Chinese or Indian meal as a starting block for a fun-packed night out. We absolutely love our satays and curries here, and years ago quite a few Chinese and Indian restaurants began to recognise this and started arranging 'curry karaoke' nights or, as with Cathay Cuisine Glasgow, the all evening gourmet dinner dance night. Basically, it's a rip-roaring laugh if you're up for it. You'll get some good grub, good grog and the promise of an evening out you'll be talking about for years. Glaswegians have been known to drink more, stay out later, talk louder, and party harder than the residents of any other city in the world, and lining the stomach of every cracking night has tended to be a Chinese or Indian meal. If you've enough energy to keep up therefore, booking yourself a table at Cathay Cuisine Glasgow will not disappoint! If you just want to experience the food however, simply book an earlier table and head out elsewhere.

So however you want to sample Cantonese food Glasgow style, relaxed & romantic or lively & entertaining, you can't go far wrong with this place, our best Chinese Glasgow restaurant.

Chinese Glasgow Restaurant Menu

What do you fancy? You'll get a great variety at a very reasonable price, whether you're ordering from their Glasgow Chinese takeaway menu or sitting at a table.

As with most Cantonese Chinese Glasgow restaurants, you'll find your dim sum, which is an excellent choice here if you have some time on your hands, as these succulent dishes take about 20 minutes to prepare.

For starters, my personal favourites are galay rolls (just like spring rolls except filled with scrumptious curried beef), siu mai pork dumplings, and sang - choi bau (yuk shun), which is basically chopped pork, beef, chicken or prawns, with Chinese vegetables in a spicy sauce & wrapped in lettuce. I sometimes also plump for the bog-standard chicken & noodle soup, a dish which so often turns out to be completely tasteless depending on where you go, but prepared to perfection here.

Seafood-wise, I'm a stickler for Cathay Cuisine's quick fried scallops in green pepper & black bean sauce, but opt occasionally for the king prawn with pineapple & pickled ginger. King prawn is a popular dish in these parts, and in this Chinese Glasgow restaurant you'll have a decision on your hands about how best to sample it, as there's just so much variation on the menu.

One of the most famous dishes at Cathay Cuisine Glasgow (and my brother-in-law John absolutely swears by this) is the aromatic crispy duck, with pancakes, rainbow vegetables & hoi-sin sauce. You can tuck into that baby as a quarter portion or you can ask for half the duck! Like I said before, they'll be rolling you out the door...

Other than that, you can order a whole range of beef, pork & chicken dishes szechwan, sweet & sour, chow mein, cantonese, kung po, cajun, thai & black bean style, as well as Eastern Delights like char-gu shone lau (a sliced fillet of beef & chicken, cooked with Chinese straw mushrooms in a satay sauce) and a varied vegetarian menu. Fantastic!

You'll also have the European menu which features of course Glasgow's much-adored chicken maryland, and you can get side dishes like yung chow fried rice and the never-ending but always, always appreciated prawn crackers.

Desserts include toffee apple fritter balls (not to be missed - put your diet to one side!), or cheesecake of the day with fresh cream.

There's a very cheap childrens' menu, a business lunch which they practically throw at you (given how much you get for the price you pay), a pre-theatre deal, and as mentioned before, the all evening gourmet dinner & a la carte option.

The takeaway delivery from this Chinese Glasgow restaurant operates around the southside, but you can phone and collect from the restaurant if you prefer.

Not sure what you want? Just shut your eyes, point at the menu and let fate decide!

Rouken Glen Park Glasgow	Rouken Glen Glasgow Walled Garden
A nice winter scene at the park	The Rouken Glen Waterfall

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