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Good hearty Scottish food in the West End

Dalry Road. Opposite Somerfield and a bunch of charity shops. Hardly an ideal venue for a nice restaurant, you might think. And you'd be right - it's not ideal. But once you get inside and nestled into one of the cosy booths that constitute the majority of the seating, there's nowhere you'd rather be. Especially when if it's lashing with rain outside as it was on the evening we visited.

We ordered a bottle of Australian Shiraz Cabernet from the varied and well-priced, if slightly uninspiring wine list. To start I had black pudding on a bed of mash and my dining partner had vegetarian haggis. I suffered from a little food envy here. The black pudding was a little bland, and while the tasty red onion marmalade accompaniment went some way to make up for that, the vegetarian haggis looked like a more satisfying starter.

We both went for steaks for main course. It would be silly not to in a steakhouse, right? There are actually lots of other options on the menu but with a big emphasis on meat throughout. Vegetarians are limited to vegetable-based impersonations of some of the meat dishes - vegetarian burgers and sausages. I went for the 8oz rib-eye steak and Jenny had the 8oz sirloin. All of the beef is described as Aberdeen Angus. As someone from a farming background, I am aware that in itself beef labelled Aberdeen Angus does not necessarily guarantee quality. But The Sizzling Scot also go to great pains to let their customers know that their meat is sourced locally from reputable suppliers and this certainly shows in the quality of the food.

I ordered my steak medium-rare and Jenny had hers medium-well (I know - criminal!). As you'd expect, they were both cooked perfectly to order and proved a real treat. The accompanying pepper sauce was good. The accompanying potato (chips for me, mash for Jenny), onion rings, mushrooms etc. were unremarkable, but the main event - the 8oz steak - could not be faulted.

Out of sheer greed and the desire to sample something from every course on the menu for the purposes of this review, we had their cheesecake of the day (white chocolate and rhubarb) and rhubarb and apple crumble with custard for dessert. The cheesecake was nice, but predictably rich with the white chocolate and the portion simply too large having just finished a hearty steak! It would have been ideal to share. Portion control was carried out with greater aplomb on the crumble, but unfortunately the yumminess couldn't match Jenny's gran's crumble efforts.

The bill came in just shy of £70, so not a cheap meal out by any stretch. Of course, three courses was totally unnecessary though, and we both had steak. So all things considered, it was a good value, good quality food, good service in a slightly not so good setting. So that's 3 and a half goods, so 3 and half stars seems about right!

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