Stereo - Best Vegan Restaurant in Scotland

Not that it really has much competition.

Mike and I occasionally go to Glasgow because Edinburgh has no specifically vegan restaurants and few vegetarian restaurants, and the latter are either Indian (Mike doesn't really like it) or ridiculously expensive (and tend to have few vegan options, surprisingly). Glasgow has quite a few options for vegans and vegetarians, most of which I haven't been to. A few years ago, I quite liked Mono, but Mike and I went there for my birthday last year, and the experience was so bad that he refuses to go back. Same with the 13th Note (which is pretty much across the street). Anyway, when my sister was here for my wedding and graduation, we went on a day trip to Glasgow and had lunch at Stereo. We had really good service and excellent food. So when Mike got a gift voucher to Borders, which has a location in Glasgow but now Edinburgh, we decided to do lunch at Stereo.

Stereo is a bit out of the way, in that it's down an alley that doesn't look like you'd want to go down it. But it's a cute place, and it's got a pretty decent menu. We both actually had a hard time deciding what we wanted, which is unusual in that it was because we had so much rather than so little choice. It was a late lunch (we went to the cinema first), so the place was fairly busy, and there was only one person waiting on everyone. But we still got prompt service, and the food came out pretty quickly.

Mike had the roasted red pepper hummus with fresh-baked flat bread as his starter


and the Calzone with artichokes, tapenade, and [something I can't remember] for his main


I had the Patatas Bravas for a starter


and the Puttanesca Gnocchi for a main


The hummus was a bit thick, but the bread was good. Mike didn't like his calzone, but he'd never had artichokes before, and I kinda figured he wouldn't like the tapenade. I thought it was alright, but I didn't want to eat his food because I had my own, and mine was delicious. OK, the potatoes were a bit spicy, but the gnocchi was so good that I didn't want to stop eating even when I was full. But it worked out, because Mike ate all the potatoes (I had a couple) and most of his bread (with the sauce for the potatoes), and I ate most of my gnocchi.

My only complaint about Stereo is that they only have dessert specials (nothing set on the menu), and the only thing that appealed today was the brownie with ice cream, which I couldn't have because it contained nuts. Boo-urns! But at least now we have a place we know we can go back to, though I might actually try to remember some of the other places we've never been to for our next trip out there.