Outlier, Glasgow G1: ‘This kind of carefully orchestrated can’t-be-arsedness is really quite magical’ – restaurant review | Grace Dent on restaurants

In my misspent youth, I’d head to Glasgow to watch the likes of Fields of the Nephilim and Hawkwind at the Barrowland Boardroom, drink snakebite and buy posters from the touts on Gallowgate to Blu-Tack to my bedroom wall and tear holes in my mother’s woodchip wallpaper. Today, however, I’m here to visit Outlier, a bakery/restaurant/art space that serves warm bread, sticky treats and porchetta with beetroot and plum caponata. It’s on London Road just minutes from the Barrowland, and I’ve wound up here thanks only to a complete stranger on Buchanan Street who wrote down its name on the back of an old receipt and pressed it into my hand. She implored me to try the green jasmine rice pudding, the fresh sourdough and the chocolate and hazelnut babka. We used to do this type of inter-human face-to-face contact thing a lot back in the 1980s, before the internet ruined life.

Outlier originally opened back in 2022, after Steven Turner, who had previously run various arts venues, applied to turn the building into a space for artists with a kitchen attached. What we have now is a fairly sparse but charming space, tiled a bit like an old swimming baths in places, in mustards and dark, glossy browns. There are pale, unvarnished wooden tables, speckled stoneware plates, green, pressed-glass tumblers and prices handwritten on scraps of coloured card. When it all comes together, this kind of carefully orchestrated can’t-be-arsedness is really quite magical, and from the outset I found Outlier intensely likable.

We perch in a window seat, perusing an actively dreamy brunch menu: blood peach panzanella with Isle of Wight tomatoes, Toulouse sausage with braised Umbrian lentils, or celery soup with Highland blue cheese. Even so, it is the cake counter that has proper main-character energy here. Just after opening at 11am, it is piled high with those babka buns, apple crumble and custard cakes, and bright, jubilant strawberry pastries. The bakers work behind that counter on long tables, and a queue snakes through the space and back out of the door. Outlier’s playlist is cheery and knowing – classic ska, Squeeze’s back catalogue – and it just can’t fail to keep things buoyant. Thirty-five years may have passed since I last hung out meaningfully in this postcode, but the place still feels vibrantly alive.

A plate of warm house sourdough comes with a generously large serving of cured sea trout with bronze fennel, sharp horseradish creme fraiche and summer pickles dyed into a hot-pink, Barbie shade by beetroot, and in which chunks of cauliflower, onion and turnip zing with acidity. That jasmine rice pudding comes ethereally dusted in matcha, like a pixie swimming pool. Yes, it is a big bowl of rice pudding at 11am, but I’m not complaining, not least because of its beautiful notes of gooseberry and lime leaf. I’ve started the day with carbs, carbs and more carbs, and a pot of good earl grey tea; if only all days could be so wantonly good.

Outlier’s sandwiches, meanwhile, are frankly ridiculous. The fried chicken thigh on a house milk bun is a clodhopper, not for the meek, and comes doused in red harissa, lemon mayo and ranch dressing. The beef shin toastie is three inches thick and crammed with meat, smoked cheddar and fennel jam, all pressed between two big slices of tin loaf. It is crisp and damp all at once. Who finishes these sandwiches? Competitive eaters only, at a guess. I stash half of it away in a paper box to save for later, archly aware that down south it would be three times the price.

By this time, we are full to bursting, yet someone is loading that cake counter with fresh chocolate fudge cake topped with a giant wave of coffee buttercream. There are cinnamon buns in brown butter frosting, too, as well as olive oil cake cut into neat slabs. It’s so rare in this day and age to see home-baked cakes that have not been delivered frozen by a van, and that aren’t also going to 17 other shops in the vicinity. Instead, these are bespoke numbers made by people standing all of eight feet away from you.

So, stranger on Buchanan Street with your big pen and your TK Maxx receipt tipoff, you were absolutely correct to flag me down. Outlier has a buzz for good reason. You cannot fake fabulous by simply buying in cool crockery and a freezer full of someone else’s pastry. I shall return for the lamb shoulder with green harissa and black cardamom yoghurt, and a poppyseed and raspberry custard bun. Next time, though, I’ll be prepared and wear a loose waistband. This place is not an outlier at all, but centre stage in all the big reasons to love Glasgow.

• Outlier 38 London Road, Glasgow G1 (no phone or website). Open all week, Mon-Thurs 8am-4pm, Fri & Sat 8am-5pm, Sun 9am-5pm (opening for dinner Thurs-Sun in early 2027). From about £25 a head, plus drinks and service