Mussel Inn - Glasgow

If there's one thing you can get the British hooked on, it's seafood, pun predictable. So up in Scotland, which can usually be relied upon to show us the way in quite a lot of things, they are surprisingly a bit behind the times on the fishy thing, which is extraordinary when you think they have so much of the stuff around them. Not only lots of it, but real quality as well.

But both the Glasgow and Edinburgh Mussel Inns are doing their best to make sure that Scotland catches up and tells the world that Scottish seafood is streets ahead of the rest.

In Hope Street to be precise, that well-used thoroughfare that offers a pleasant link between Bath Lane and St Vincent Street, is friendly and well-used, and passes close enough to Blythswood Square to make life interesting. The Glasgow Mussel Inn has won many awards, one of the latest of which (April/07) is the EatScotland Award, for extraordinary seafood.

Seafood chowder and the soup of the day both come with fresh crusty bread, or there's a crab salad with a nice lemon and tomato vinaigrette. The grilled platters give an option between starters or light meals, and oysters are either chilled natural, or grilled with a choice of cheese and bacon, or garlic butter.

In my experience goat's cheese makes an excellent foil for seafood flavours, none more so than when breaded, deep-fried and served with sweet tomato chutney, as here.

Plump, juicy King scallops are a weakness for many, and at Mussel you can have them char grilled, on a skewer, pan fried, breaded or stir fried. Their small cousins, mussels, come in kilo pots, again with choices, this time natural, shallot, tomato, lemon, Moroccan or blue cheese, of which the Moroccan, with chillies garlic, ginger, coriander and cumin sounds highly toothsome. But I think I would have been diverted by thoughts of the hot seafood platter with its prawns, queenies, scallops, mussels and fish well before then, particularly as they emphasise the 'plenty of sauce for dipping' bit, and there's an inspired choice of dips.

Round off with a chocolate truffle torte and light orange sauce, then shuffle off into a dark corner to rest until it's time to come back.

The wine list is predictably mostly white, though with some concession to heathens like myself who occasionally like to have some wiry red with their shellfish. Happily this little foible is recognised by a short section on red and roses, crouching on the list rather like a well hung fillet steak on a vegetarian menu. Their Locret Lachaud Brut, from the same province as Dom Perignon lives up to its claim of being excellent taste and value.

The Scottish passion for deep-fried Mars Bars is well catalogued, but not available at the Mussels, where brownies with chocolate sauce and ice cream may challenge the odds just as much, but do it with more grace. Me? Well, I'll just settle for the coconut cheese cake with passion fruit and mango sauce, and dream . . . . .

Both Mussels are doing a first class job for their public and the cause of seafood in general. Any differences or preferences are purely personal and slight and do not affect the excellence of either.

For far more information - including their full menu - try a visit to their fun-packed Website, from which I was delighted to have authoritative evidence for what my instincts have been telling me ever since my first mussel, that seafood is seriously good for you.