The Smokin' Fox
It won Sunday Mail Pub of the Year at the 2024 Scottish Bar and Pub Awards, a title decided by mystery shoppers who cut a Scotland-wide top ten down to four (DRAM, The Scotsman).
Why go
Read the year carefully, because the pub does not print it: the win is 2024, and MacSorley's took the same title in 2025 (DRAM, Aug 2025). Signature Pubs built the place out of The Hope in mid-March 2017, keeping the Victorian bones and adding pop-art, and pitched the kitchen as traditional classics and feel good food with a Scottish twist
(DRAM, Mar 2017). It sits directly across from Glasgow Central, which is the practical reason to know it: a proper sit-down plate and a Scottish tap 30 seconds from the concourse, and an award that says the service holds up under a station's worth of traffic.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the Sunday roast, from noon, in beef, chicken or vegan, with unlimited trimmings8. Otherwise the haggis bon bons with pepper sauce to start, and the pork and black pudding sausage ring with grain mustard mash and roast onion gravy, which is the most Scottish thing on the list. The three cheese macaroni uses smoked Applewood.
- Avoid: taking the prices on their own menu pages at face value. The linked lunch PDF is a winter menu from November 2017. And do not turn up on Sunday afternoon unbooked, since their own line on the roast is "Once it's gone, it's gone."
What locals & experts say
- Rosalind Erskine, The Scotsman food and drink (29 August 2024):
The Smokin' Fox took home the Sunday Mail Pub of the Year accolade,
at the 29th Scottish Bar and Pub Awards, held at the Doubletree Hilton in Glasgow on 27 August 2024.1 - Susan Young, editor of DRAM (12 August 2024), on the ten pubs that made the shortlist:
The final 10 are all pubs with the X-factor, be it great staff, superb service, excellent food or the best beer.
2 - Mhari Raw, Business Development Manager at Signature Pubs, at the 2017 opening:
We intend to have a lot of fun with this unit and our team are really excited to be working on such an exciting project.
3 - Best Bar None Glasgow: Gold Medal, per the pub's own post. Best Bar None accredits management and operating standards, and the venue does not state which edition it won, so treat the scope as unpinned.9
- No critic has reviewed the kitchen. Nothing surfaced from the Herald, Glasgow Times, Glasgowist or The Skinny, so every judgment quoted here is about the operation rather than the plate.
Good to know
- Timing: open through the day. Lunch offer Monday to Friday, noon to 3pm; brunch Saturday and Sunday, 10am to noon; pre-theatre two courses at GBP 10 or three at GBP 12, Monday to Thursday 5pm to 8pm, as published. Sundays are roast day and it sells out.
- Booking:
We welcome walk-ins for food & drinks, but please note we only take bookings for diners
5. - Hygiene: Pass, though the recorded inspection is 11 July 20196.
- Getting there: 6-8 Waterloo Street, opposite Glasgow Central. The FSA register files the same premises as 4 Waterloo Street, which is worth knowing if you go looking for the rating.
Craft signals (the kitchen is the axis here, not the bar)
There is no cask and no rotating tap list to read, so this entry calls evolution on the food. The pub states its own kitchen policy as feel-good pub dishes built on fresh, seasonal ingredients5, and the DRAM coverage above tracks the smokehouse menu changing with what the kitchen is curing and cooking. Seasonal is the honest label: the plate moves and the bar does not.
Verdict
could-visit — A Signature Pubs conversion of the old Hope, opposite Central Station since March 2017, that won Sunday Mail Pub of the Year at the 2024 Scottish Bar and Pub Awards after mystery shoppers cut a Scotland-wide top ten to four. That is a service and operations credential rather than a cooking one, and it fits what the place is: haggis bon bons, a sausage ring with mustard mash, three cheese macaroni, Scottish taps, a pre-theatre deal and a roast that sells out. Nobody has reviewed the kitchen, so there is no evidence of craft beyond competent pub cooking. Use it as the pre-train or pre-theatre stop it is built to be.