The Glasgow institution, The Ubiquitous Chip in Ashton Lane, which has been owned by the Clydesdale family for over 50 years, has been bought over by Greene Kings Metropolitan Pub Company.
The deal includes the two other restaurants owned by Colin Clydesdale and his partner Carol Wright. These are Stravaigan and the Hanoi Bike Shop both of which are also located in Glasgow’s west end.
The sale heralds the end of an era for the Clydesdale family and for Glaswegians who affectionately referred to the Ubiquitous Chip as ‘The Chip’.
The restaurant was opened by Colin Clydesdale’s father, Ronnie, in 1971 and he was one of the first chefs in Scotland to focus on quality, locally sourced ingredients. He was referred to as “The godfather of Scottish cooking.” Ronnie died in 2010 at the age of 74 and since then the business has been run by his son Colin and Carol.
Colin told DRAM earlier this year, “No one else really did ‘provenance’ in the 1970s and 1980s. We didn’t actually call it that back then but everything we presented at Ubiquitous Chip was locally sourced. Everything was Scottish. The ethos we prescribed to was on-point right from the get go.”
Over the years the Ubiquitous Chip has enjoyed the patronage of people from around the globe and has remained a firm favourite with locals too. Customers have included Michael Keaton, Billy Connolly, Kylie Minogue, Keira Knightley, Lewis Capaldi, Kelly Macdonald and Craig Ferguson (the latter two both former employees). As well as politicians – too many to mention – and journalists from far and wide too.
Colin believes that the new owners will be a safe pair of hands. Greene King owns more than 2,700 pubs, restaurants, and hotels across the UK and the Metropolitan Pub Company owns over 70 gastro pubs in London.
He said,“Metropolitan Pub Company approached Carol and I, as great admirers of The Chip, Stravaigin and Hanoi, with an interest in buying. After much consideration, we decided to sell the business that has been in family ownership since 1971.
“I truly believe the business and people will be in safe hands with Michael and the team, who will continue the legacy that we have built. We look forward to visiting as customers for many years to come.”
Michael Horan, managing director of Metropolitan Pub Company, said: “We are really excited to welcome these iconic sites to the Metropolitan estate, and continuing the legacy that the Clydesdale family has built over the last 50 years.
“We are looking forward to working with the 145 team members to continue providing the world class hospitality to the people of Glasgow.”
Over the years the DRAM has interviewed Colin and Carol a number of times – below are two of the interviews from recent years – one from the time of their 50th celebrations for The Ubiquitous Chip and the other by Jason Caddy when the duo celebrated the 25th anniversary of Stravaigin in 2019.
Celebrating 50 Years 2022
The Ubiquitous Chip was originally located in Ruthven Lane in the first half of the 1970s, in what was a glorified electrician’s yard, before moving to Ashton Lane around five years later.
Colin recalls, “One of my earliest memories is of sitting on an old box in the store room at Ruthven Lane with my shipbuilder grandfather, around the age of five, eating soup. He put pepper in the soup and I was amazed at the difference such a light touch of this mysterious powder made to the taste of the soup. From such a humble moment, an instant and lasting intrigue to the possibilities of taste was sparked.
“Food has been omnipresent my entire life. My brother Ewan and I were brought up around it on a daily basis. Dad gave us a second to none education on food. He dragged us around the country, but there was never any snobbery; Glasgow’s first kebab shop, country house hotels, Michelin star restaurants – dad was researching the industry he had chosen to go in to.”
It is a much-loved cornerstone of Ashton Lane now, with a ferocious reputation for its ‘Best of Scottish’ fare, award-winning wine curations, artist-adorned interiors and an eclectic patronage, but in 1976 it wasn’t so.
Originally a former undertakers’ stables that took several months to make habitable, Ubiquitous Chip’s initial proposition on Ashton Lane in 1976 was a 50-seat downstairs restaurant operating under a bring your own license, and with what can best be described as an ad hoc approach to interior design, one such example being the Chip’s fish pond.
Upstairs in the warehouse, famed Glaswegian designer and illustrator Ranald MacColl had a studio, as did well known florist Sandy Martin. With no money to pay his rent, an agreement was made for Ranald to build a pond in the Chip courtyard using a pile of discarded sandstone, traced back, as Colin says, “to Glasgow City Council’s hatred of beautiful Victorian architecture.”
The Chip has enjoyed many configurations over the years, each evolution marked with marvellous tales of ingenuity and common-sense Glasgow gallus. In the 1980s, the Ubiquitous Chip Restaurant, with its intimate 50 covers, and located off what was then a large vacant courtyard, had an unconventional journey to expansion.
Colin remembers: “The success of the Restaurant when we opened was instant, truly meteoric. Demand from Glasgow’s cultural cognoscenti clearly outstripped our capacity. Back then we had a public phone on the wall of the Restaurant, with its own table and chairs. One evening, two of our most loyal customers, Bruce Petty and Brian Coyle, when informed there was no space to accommodate their dining request simply picked up the phone box’s table and chairs, and placed them outside in the vacant courtyard. Henceforth, the Courtyard Restaurant was born!
“The pond, built by Ranald, has subsequently been a scene of drama and delight over the years; Alasdair Gray painted a mural beside the pond, danced around the pond, and fell in the pond. On another occasion, the Chip’s handyman Brian Finnie dropped a pot of paint in it – cue colanders and sieves to retrieve the pot and (successfully) save the exotic fish. Brian was ok too.”
It is food though which has always been the driving passion for Ubiquitous Chip. The concept of traceability punctuates many a restaurant’s proposition these days – and is to be commended – but the Chip was flying a largely lone flag for it in Scotland 50 years ago.
“No one else really did ‘provenance’ in the 1970s and 1980s”, Colin reflects. “We didn’t actually call it that back then but everything we presented at Ubiquitous Chip was locally sourced. Everything was Scottish. The ethos we prescribed to was on-point right from the get go, and is still at the core of what we do today.”
“Extreme provenance might be a more appropriate description. We had handwritten menus for lunch, then handwritten menus again for dinner. Before every service we had to go into the kitchen to get the exact dish and ‘provenance’ from the chef. What farm supplied today’s lamb, what fisherman caught today’s squid, and so on. Back then there was a disconnect between locally sourced produce and what restaurants in Glasgow, and indeed Scotland, were offering to the public. It wasn’t a deliberate omission. The concept of provenance and traceability, as we know it today, just simply didn’t exist.”
Stravaigan’s 25th birthday 2019
Licensee interview: Carol Wright and Colin Clydesdale on Stravaign’s 25th birthday