Tantrum Doughnuts Gordon Street
Iain Baillie won a scholarship to Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck, spent hours laying sugar-syruped parsnip slices on dehydrator trays, and now runs an overnight-proved brioche dough through a doughnut counter opposite Central Station.
Why go
Baillie trained at Perth College, cooked at Gleneagles under Paul Devonshire and then at One Devonshire Gardens, and started Tantrum in 2015 with his wife Annika, selling at Drygate's market out of a Mini before the first shop opened on Old Dumbarton Road. The dough is the reason the pastry reads differently from a supermarket ring: "It is a brioche dough which takes a long time to make and it can be quite temperamental," he told The Scotsman, and the doughnuts are "mixed and proved overnight, fried and decorated before being driven to the shops." The Gordon Street counter is the city-centre branch of the same daily bake. Three formats run at once, the signature brioche, a cakier old-fashioned style and vegan rings, with flavors from pistachio and hibiscus to plain raspberry jam.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the Crème Brûlée, which Baillie describes as
a vanilla custard doughnut topped with sugar syrup and then blow torched,
so the sugar cracks the way it does on the dessert. Jeff's line is the same: try the signature creme brulee.1 - Avoid: saving one for tomorrow. There are no preservatives, the shop says refrigeration ruins the texture, and in Baillie's words "everything we make is for that day."
What locals & experts say
- The Scotsman (May 2021), Catriona Thomson: Baillie on his Fat Duck scholarship,
The first thing I had to do was place very thinly sliced parsnips soaked in sugar syrup on dehydrator trays, nice and neatly, but it took hours.
1 - Glasgowist (Best of Glasgow): names Baillie's pastry background at The Fat Duck, One Devonshire Gardens, Gleneagles and Ox and Finch behind the three-format menu.3
- Local rec: Jeff's save, his note below.
Good to know
- Timing: a morning proposition. One bake a day, driven out from the Glasgow bakery, and the good flavors go first.
- Booking: walk-in for the counter. Large pre-orders close at 3pm the day before collection.
- Getting there: 28 Gordon Street, steps from Glasgow Central's Gordon Street entrance, so it works as a platform-side stop. Sister shops sit on Old Dumbarton Road in Yorkhill and Minard Road in Shawlands.
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: "Famous for some of the best doughnuts in Glasgow. Be sure to try the signature creme brulee."
Verdict
should-visit — Worth the detour, and it is a five-minute detour. A pastry chef who trained at the Fat Duck is running an overnight-proved brioche dough through a small daily bake and finishing the signature with a blowtorch, which is dessert-kitchen technique sold for pocket change opposite Central Station. It stays under must-visit because the format is a counter with no seating and no independent critic has yet put the product on record.