Design Focus – Meat Bar

Graham Swankie and Scott Hurst aren’t afraid of rolling up their sleeves when it comes to the nuts and bolts of a new project. The business partners, who own and operate Glasgow’s Bath Street Palomino, have put their names to a second joint venture in the city, The Meat Bar, which they designed themselves. They bought the freehold for the West Regent Street basement property from Belhaven.
Says Graham, “Meat Bar is a concept that we have been working on for about 12 months, and we both came up with the design concept, although Scott was the person who drove it most, as well as project managing it.
“So we were both here every step of the way, working day in and day out, as we didn’t have a blueprint for the design as such. What we were clear about, however, was the menu and the food offering (meat-infused cocktails, burgers, sliders) and the rest of the design fell into place. We used the same contractors that we used on the Bath Street Palomino, even though the rustic look of Meat is a contrast to the polished look of Palomino.”
The basement space has had many different identities over the years, most recently The Bay, although in a previous incarnation it was more renowned for its live music offering, as Graham explains, “Many years ago it was called Hurricane’s and I believe that The Clash was one of the bands to have played there back in the day, so it is a bit of an institution to some people in Glasgow.”
Getting the bar to the level that they envisioned did take hard work, dedication and patience. Says Graham, “We stripped both the interior and the exterior right back, and this took some work. Inside, we had to peel off at least four layers of interiors gone by to get to the exposed stone walls that we were after, and we even gained about a foot on either side of the space in doing so.”
He continues, “The exterior was paired back to reveal the original frontage, bearing the signage for ‘Splendor Lamps’, which dates back to 1868, and Scott was particularly keen to give a few nods to this with the inclusion of some lamps inside the bar. Lighting is his speciality. All of the neighbouring businesses have been delighted with this find too, and made it clear that they wanted us to keep it, which was always our intention anyway.”
The interior design was slightly limited by the size of the place, although if you were acquainted with The Bay, The Lounge or even Hurricane’s, then you will probably notice the difference that extra couple of feet has made. This has also been helped by the fact that the ceiling has also been elevated ever so slightly, and with the addition of the part-open kitchen visible through the gantry. Graham and Scott also widened the three glass doors at the front which open out into the small outdoor area which, on the day I visited, was comfortably accommodating a party of about 25 people.
The layout from the entrance is fairly straightforward in the square space with a bar stretching the entire way across the left handside wall, with a little 3-table snug tucked in beside it. The right hand-side and back walls are lined with hide tan leather banquettes (another nod to the meat).
Lots of reclaimed wood as been used to clad the ceilings and the walls, plus the floor is wooden, so this reclaimed look pretty much dominates, in between the grey painted walls. The bar, too, is made from a wooden top, with a frontage that’s a mix of dark grey slate and more wood. The glass shelved gantry looks on to the small kitchen space, and the sparing use of white brick-shaped porcelain tiles freshens up the design just nicely. The kitchen is equally as compact, and boats an American imported smoking oven, of which the business partners are particularly proud.
There’s also some of-the-moment concrete rendering along the back bar, which is a bit roughcast so it looks different throughout the day as the light changes.
Also behind the bar is a glass door looking on to the cellar, which as Graham explains, is a part of Meat that is a work in progress. “We are building our portfolio of American and Scottish craft beers, so that we eventually have a ‘wall’ of them in the cellar that is visible to customers standing at the bar. We are going to be installing some mood lighting in the near future to make a feature out of what we hope will eventually become Glasgow’s largest craft beer collection. Given the size of the cellar we are limited on draught beer, so it’s what is called accentuating the positive.”
The lighting, all of which was hand-picked by Scott, is also worth a mention. It’s kind of industrial-meets-air-raid-shelter with a mixture of large angle-poise lamps with grey metal shades and exposed bulbs, and a few discreet wall lights in metal cages that look like they belong in an underground bunker somewhere.
In what is quite an unfussy interior, a good thing in my view, one design feature that does stand out is the cow skull that hangs on the wall to the right as you enter, in its own little illuminated recess. Below it is a wooden shelf, the combination of which makes it look
a bit like a shrine.
On the two occasions I’ve had the pleasure of going to Meat, both lunchtime and early evening, they didn’t seem to struggling with packing them in, so the fuss-free design and menu must already be chiming with Glaswegians.