Sylvan
Colin Campbell and Jake Martell left The Hug and Pint to open a vegetarian kitchen that treats vegetables like protein: they smoke tomatoes and dress them in chilli butter, and they give hen of the woods a Southern-fried batter and a miso mushroom ragu.
Why go
The site on Woodlands Road was Grassroots Organic before them, and the room now runs floor-to-ceiling shelving that the Scotsman likened to a Bauhaus classroom. The wine is the second half of the argument: mostly low-intervention, sustainable, organic and biodynamic European bottles bought from local independent importers, poured by the glass and sold by the bottle from a shop at the back of the space, so a bottle you like at the table goes home at retail. Cocktails run classic. The kitchen serves lunch and dinner Monday to Saturday and the bar carries on after the food stops.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the smoked tomatoes with cheesy yoghurt and melted chilli butter, which Gaby Soutar summed up as
You say tom-ay-to, I say, who cares what you call them, these taste incredible.
Then the hen of the woods in itspuffy and glossy
batter with a wild mushroom raguclad in a miso gravy.
Both prices are from 2021, so expect movement.1 - Avoid: Sunday, when the room only opens for private hire, and groups over 12, which have to be arranged by email rather than booked online.
What locals & experts say
- The Scotsman (August 2021): Gaby Soutar on the smoked tomatoes, daubed with harissa or chipotle,
these halved apples of love had been smoked... and tasted magnificently complex.
On the mushroom main,It was intense and feral.
1 - Glasgow Live (November 2025): reported the owners confirming a Southside expansion, a wine shop with a possible bar, which became Sylvan La Cave on Sinclair Drive.3
- Local rec: Jeff's save, his note below.
Good to know
- Timing: lunch noon to 4 and dinner from 5 Monday to Saturday, drinks from noon until close, and until midnight Friday and Saturday. Closed Sunday except for private hire.
- Booking: reservations online for food or drinks, up to 12 people. Larger parties by email.
- Getting there: 20 Woodlands Road, on the walk between Charing Cross and Kelvinbridge. Ground-level wheelchair access, and dogs are welcome until 6pm. The Sinclair Drive site in the Southside is the shop, not this bar.
Craft signals (wine: depth and importer relationships)
No evolution: value is recorded here, deliberately. Wine craft is read on depth, buying relationships and grower access before it is read on churn, and this list is built the right way round: over 80 low-intervention bottles bought from local independent importers, mostly organic, biodynamic and sustainable European fine wine, with a variety open by the glass and the same bottles available at retail from the shop at the back. The buying is the craft, and no source records a glass-rotation cycle or a tasting programme to score cadence on. Calling that static would be the wrong reading, so the field is left off.
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: "Wine bar and cocktails"
Verdict
should-visit — Sylvan is worth the detour. A seafood-and-wine general manager names it in the industry guide and names dishes and the list rather than the room, which is a topic-matched vote from someone who buys in that field for a living. Depth rather than rotation is the axis here, and the case is in the body.