The Hug and Pint
The room takes its name from Arab Strap's album Monday At The Hug & Pint, a record about a pub that does not exist, and the kitchen upstairs has cooked off a blackboard that changes as plates run out since 2015.
Why go
There is no set menu. The board carries four or five mains and a couple of sides, and it turns over as and when they are used up
, which The Scotsman recorded in 2015 and GlasgowWorld described again in 2019 as a rotation that changes daily (Scotsman, GlasgowWorld). The cooking pulls from Thai, Indonesian, Korean and South American ingredients, and you can watch it happen in a kitchen the reviewer called tiny. Downstairs is a 100-capacity music venue with shows on most nights, which is the reason the bar runs to midnight while the kitchen stops at nine. Head chef Jake Martell was running both this kitchen and the team's Southside residency when GlasgowWorld reported on them in January 2019. Co-founder Colin Campbell put the venue's ambitions plainly in the same piece, talking about programming gigs or running The National Whisky Festival
as ways a small room influences why people come to Glasgow. There is no cask ale, per CAMRA's Glasgow branch survey.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the coconut soup with cassava and rice dumplings if the board has it, which is the dish The Scotsman singled out. Sweet and hot tempeh with kimchi. Red chilli aubergine with pickled cucumber and sticky rice. The puffed rice salad with lime and crisp noodles.
- Avoid: turning up after 9pm expecting food, and the sweet and sour tamarind plantain, which is the one plate the review put at the sweet end.
What locals & experts say
- Kirsty McLuckie, The Scotsman, October 2015, food 8/10:
The stand-out dish was the coconut soup with cassava and rice dumplings. The potato-like cassava was served in noodle thin strips while the smudgy dumplings dissolved in the creaminess of the sauce. This comfort food felt like the promised hug.
1 - The same review's critical line, on the one plate that missed: the sweet and sour tamarind plantain and rice
was our least favourite, it verged on being too sweet
.1 - GlasgowWorld, January 2019, on the format and the crew: the evening menu is
styled on The Hug and Pint's ever-popular rotating menu of pan-Asian cuisine
andwill change daily
, with head chef Jake Martell across both kitchens.2 - CAMRA, Glasgow & West of Scotland branch, survey last updated 25 November 2024:
Modern bar and restaurant with frequent music events.
The same listing recordsCask Ale not available.
3 - No review since 2015 was found. The Glasgow Times, The Skinny, The Glasgow Bell and Glasgowist were searched by name on 30 July 2026 and none carries a later assessment of the food. A Marina O'Loughlin piece for The Times circulates in search summaries with no reachable URL, so it is not cited here.
Good to know
- Where: 171 Great Western Road at St George's Cross, 250 m from the subway, in the unit that was Liquid Ship and before that Roxy 171.
- Timing: 5pm to midnight Monday to Thursday, 3pm to midnight Friday to Sunday, with the kitchen closing at 9pm.
- Booking: the venue takes table bookings and it is worth using them on a gig night.
- Access: the music venue is reached by a staircase at the back of the restaurant, and the venue states it cannot offer wheelchair access to it and has not found a fix.
- Diet, unresolved: every source up to 2019 describes an entirely vegan kitchen. Aggregator listings claim egg and cheese joined the menu in August 2023 and that it now runs vegetarian with vegan options. No citable source and no statement from the venue confirms either, and the venue publishes its menus as Google Drive files that were not read on 30 July 2026. Check before you go if it matters.
- Beer: no cask. There is a standing GBP 5 margarita, espresso martini and Aperol spritz every day.
- Hygiene: the Food Hygiene Information Scheme records a Pass, rating date 11 September 2019. Pass is the clean result in the Scottish scheme, and that inspection is nearly seven years old.5
Verdict
could-visit — A cheap pan-Asian kitchen sitting on top of a 100-capacity gig room, named after an Arab Strap album about an imaginary pub, and the case for going is the combination rather than either half. The blackboard carries four or five mains and turns over as they sell out, which two outlets four years apart describe the same way, so the rotation is real craft rather than menu language. The Scotsman gave the food 8/10 and singled out a coconut soup with cassava and rice dumplings, but that was 2015, the head chef on record is from a 2019 piece, and nobody has assessed the cooking since. There is no cask ale and no award anyone can name. Weighing the plate first, the honest position is that this is a good bet on a gig night and an unmeasured one on a Tuesday, so it sits mid-ladder until a current critic goes in. Anyone choosing it for a vegan meal should check the menu first, because the all-vegan kitchen documented up to 2019 is reported to have taken on egg and cheese and the venue's own menus were not readable this pass.