The Red Onion

The Red Onion is an award winning restaurant in Glasgow's city centre. The restaurant is owned and run by chef John Quigley, who established himself as fine dining guru in the West End of London and toured the world as private chef for musicians like Tina Turner, Guns'n'Roses and Bryan Adams. And with Bryan Adams being vegan, John really knows his stuff!

The restaurant serves omni cuisine with a Scottish focus, but has a great separate vegan menu with several options for starters, mains and desserts.

Vegan Options:

The Red Onion has a variety of a la carte and set menus, from gluten free to dairy free and of course vegan. On the vegan set menu, you find 5 different starters, 4 mains and 3 desserts to choose from. 

The Red Onion presents Scottish dishes with a twist, uses lots of fresh seasonal and locally sources produce. I won't list all the options here, but you can find them all on their website.

Labelling: 

Coming on a separate sheet of paper, it is really easy to rely on every item on the vegan menu to be in fact vegan!

Budget:

Even though I'd consider the Red Onion a great fine dining option in the city centre, the food is really budget-friendly. Two courses from the set menu are £16.95, three courses come at £19.95. Dinner service on Friday and Saturday night after 7pm is slightly more expensive - £19.50 for two courses and £25 for three.

The Red Onion had been on my list for a while, so when my omni friend Steve from Germany came to Glasgow to cover the city on his YouTube channel, we chose the restaurant for a vegan- and omni-friendly feast. 

I went for the whole she-bang - the three course vegan set menu and had the haggis bon bons, a wild mushroom, mustard and winter greens tart and the banana fritters with peanut praline and chocolate sauce. The haggis was amazing, as you can imagine - you can never go wrong with veggie haggis. The tart was also delicious and came with a big leafy salad.

I knew I was in for a winner though, when it came to the dessert. My friend, being an omni, had a slightly bigger choice of desserts and went for a chocolate brownie with honeycomb ice-cream. Normally this would have made me jealous, especially when all you get as a vegan is apple crumble, sorbet or a fruit salad. Not so at the Red Onion though! The banana fritters with peanut praline and chocolate sauce were absolutely incredible - even Steve, who got to taste both, said that he actually preferred my vegan dessert over his!

Overall, the Red Onion is a great restaurant for a special occasion or when you want to treat yourself to a big menu with a small price tag. I like the unpretentious vibe (which so many other fine-dining restaurants around the world lack) and the personal touch we got, when chef John Quigley came out to make sure everything was OK for us!