Redmond's
In a trade with a bad record on pay, this bar is on record paying a living wage and cutting its staff in on the profits.
Why go
It opened on Duke Street in 2014 and the kitchen went Japanese and Korean from the start, at a point when a Glasgow bar menu meant pizzas and burgers. Manager David Kirkwood explains the thinking: If you go to another city on your holidays and you go to a bar with really cool food offerings you talk about it when you get home
(GlasgowWorld). The beer runs on the same logic. He wants a modern pub to do both
, so the rotating craft taps and the Tennent's and Guinness are given equal weight and, in his words, you don't treat the two types, craft beer and major brewery beer, as any different
. The Glasgow Pub and Bar Awards named it the city's Best Bar in 2024. The vinyl started because somebody brought a turntable in during the first six months, and playing records forces you
to play whole albums.
Order this / avoid
- Drink: whatever has just gone on the taps, since the list turns over constantly. A pint of Tennent's is treated with the same care here as anything on the craft board.
- Eat: the Japanese and Korean plates. That is where the kitchen puts its effort.
- Avoid: cask, which was discontinued in 2019 and has not come back. Do not stand at the bar waiting either, because it runs table service.
What locals & experts say
- Sebastian Elder, The Skinny, on the room and on the thing that makes it worth writing about:
The staff are always crazy friendly, deeply knowledgeable and deftly in control of the top quality tunes. Always.
And the reason:Redmond's, in an industry renowned for screwing over its employees, insists on paying a living wage and cutting its workers in on the profits.
2 - The same listing on the offer:
there's no hour on the clock which its ever-changing array of craft beers and internationally influenced menu can't cater for.
2 - Glasgow Pub and Bar Awards 2024: Best Bar, reported by GlasgowWorld as a
destination venue
drawing people from beyond the neighbourhood.1 - CAMRA's Glasgow and West of Scotland branch, whose record is where the useful warning lives:
Cask ales used to feature in the pub but this was discontinued in 2019.
Being in CAMRA's database is not a Good Beer Guide entry and is not an endorsement.3
Good to know
- Where: 304 Duke Street, Dennistoun, G31 1RZ, four hundred metres from Bellgrove station. CAMRA's record gives G31 1RY; the statutory register says RZ and this entry follows it.
- Timing: open to midnight seven days, from noon on weekdays and 11am at weekends. Food at lunch and in the evening.
- Service: table service only. Dogs welcome, and there is wifi.
- Beer: rotating craft taps alongside the big-brewery lines. No cask since 2019.
- Hygiene: the Food Hygiene Information Scheme records a Pass, rating date 11 December 2018. Pass is the clean result in the Scottish scheme; the date is the last recorded inspection and it is nearly eight years old.4
Verdict
should-visit — Named the city's Best Bar at the 2024 Glasgow Pub and Bar Awards, and it earns that on a clear point of view rather than on a beer list alone. David Kirkwood, who manages it, will tell you the philosophy straight: a modern pub should do both, so the rotating craft taps and the Tennent's and Guinness get the same attention and neither is treated as the poor relation. The kitchen went Japanese and Korean in 2014, when every other Glasgow bar was doing pizzas and burgers, because he wanted the sort of bar food you talk about when you get home. The vinyl started because somebody brought a record player in and it forces whole albums rather than shuffled tracks. And the room pays a living wage and shares profits with its staff in a trade that mostly does not, which is the reason The Skinny writes about the people behind the bar before it writes about what is on it. Two honest caveats: cask stopped in 2019, so a real-ale drinker should look elsewhere, and nobody independent has read the tap list closely enough to size the rotation.