Daddy Marmalades
The pair who opened this place in late 2022 planned to sell beer, and three years later took SLTN's Cocktail Bar of the Year.
Why go
Mari Chierchia and Kim Toft ran Gulp in Shawlands from 2019 until the pandemic closed it a year later, which Toft describes as a lesson. We got to open a bar for the first time and make all the mistakes
(SLTN). Parnie Street was what they could afford, and Toft's first reaction to the unit was I was like, that'll never work as a bar.
It worked. Chierchia was named SLTN Mixologist of the Year in 2024, the bar took SLTN Cocktail Bar of the Year in 2025, and it has held a place on the UK Top 50 Cocktail Bars list since 2025, ranked 18 that year and 22 in 2026. The house menu concept, The Mind's Arrow, gives the drinker two axes on every cocktail, a flavor direction and an alcohol strength, which is a more useful piece of menu design than most bars attempt (Top 50 Cocktail Bars). They make the pizzas in the bar.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the Dirty Martini. Ford's is the house gin, chosen deliberately, and Chierchia's reasoning is worth hearing:
you can use it as your house, because the price point of it is amazing, and you can use it in a Martini and it's going to be a really good Martini
2. For a Negroni, take Toft's pick:I am a sucker for a Brockmans. I think Brockmans makes the nicest Negroni.
Ask what X Muse, the Scottish barley vodka, is doing on the coming Martini menu. - Avoid: the assumption that this is a Southside bar. That was Gulp, and it closed in 2020. This one is off Trongate, a two minute walk from Glasgow Cross.
What locals & experts say
- SLTN Cocktail Bar of the Year 2025: awarded by Scottish Licensed Trade News. Chierchia had taken SLTN Mixologist of the Year in 2024, with Toft also a finalist.1
- The Scotsman (Rosalind Erskine, February 2026), on the UK Top 50:
At number 22 was the only Glasgow bar on this year's list, Daddy Marmalades. Notable absences from The Gate and Absent Ear, which were on the 2025 Top 50 list.
The list is voted by an academy of more than 200 bartenders, owners and writers.3 - The bar, on its first Top 50 listing in December 2024:
This was something that, not long ago, we thought we could only dream of. Having your hopes and dreams come to life is the very best feeling.
4 - Mari Chierchia, asked what she would drink forever:
if I could pick anything to live off for the rest of my life it's always going to be green Chartreuse and lemonade.
2 - Local rec: Jeff's save. He left no note on it.
Good to know
- Where: 25 Parnie Street, off Trongate in the Merchant City, near the Tron Theatre. Not the Southside.
- Booking: tables can be booked online through the bar's own system. It is a small room, so book for a weekend.
- Timing: an evening bar. Exact hours are not published by any source checked here, so look at the venue's channels before a late arrival.
- Food: pizzas made in house, which is unusual for a cocktail bar at this level and makes it workable as a whole evening.
- Hygiene: the Food Hygiene Information Scheme rates the address a Pass, inspected 8 December 2022.6
Craft signals (cocktails: menu programme plus peer voting)
Cocktail craft is read on menu-launch cadence and industry voting, never on beer proxies. Both point the same way here. The bar builds discrete concept menus rather than swapping drinks quietly, its first being The Mind's Arrow, and it has held a place in the UK Top 50 across consecutive editions, 18th in 2025 and 22nd in 202673. Two years running from a 200-strong academy of working bartenders is the strongest peer signal this category has, and in 2026 it was the only Glasgow room they voted for.
Verdict
should-visit — SLTN's Cocktail Bar of the Year for 2025 and the only Glasgow room on the 2026 UK Top 50, at number 22, in a small space on Parnie Street. Mari Chierchia and Kim Toft opened it in late 2022 planning to sell beer, after their first bar closed in the pandemic, and Chierchia had taken SLTN Mixologist of the Year by 2024. The menu mechanic is the interesting part: The Mind's Arrow lets you choose each drink by flavor and by strength, which is a rare piece of honesty about how people actually want to drink. House pizzas alongside, and Ford's gin as the house pour because it makes a good Martini at a price they can hold.