Vera Glasgow Review: Sunday Lunch on Nithsdale Road

Vera Glasgow Review: Sunday Lunch at the New Nithsdale Road Restaurant

Glasgow’s Southside continues to be one of the city’s most interesting areas for eating out, and Vera on Nithsdale Road is one of the newest restaurants to join the neighbourhood.

We visited to try Sundays at Vera, a £35 per person sharing-style Sunday menu featuring caramelised onion flatbread, sea bream ceviche or gnocchi, barbecued porchetta and a rather unusual barbecued lemon ice cream.

If you are searching for a new restaurant in Glasgow Southside, wondering where to eat Sunday lunch in Strathbungo, or looking for something a little different from a traditional Sunday roast, here is what to expect from the Vera Glasgow Sunday menu.

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Sunday menu at Vera Glasgow

A la carte Menu at Vera Glasgow

Lunch Menu at Vera Glasgow

Vera Glasgow: new restaurant on Nithsdale Road

Located on Nithsdale Road in Glasgow’s Southside, Vera is designed as a neighbourhood restaurant with a short, seasonal menu and dishes intended for sharing.

Rather than focusing on one particular cuisine, the menu mixes influences and ingredients from around the world. On our Sunday menu that meant everything from aged Comté and porchetta to nahm jim, harissa, koji and Amalfi lemon.

It’s an approach that feels very at home among the independent restaurants, cafés and bars around Strathbungo, Pollokshields and Shawlands.

And Sunday lunch here isn’t your usual roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and gravy affair.

Sundays at Vera Glasgow

The Vera Glasgow Sunday lunch menu costs £35 per person, with a selection of additional snacks available if you want to start with a few extra plates.

The menu during our visit included:

To begin

Caramelised onion flatbread with aged Comté.

Then a choice between:

Sea bream ceviche, grape nahm jim and coriander

Gnocchi, harissa and black pepper

For the table

Barbecued porchetta with preserved lemon gremolata

Confit new-season potatoes with koji dressing

Barbecued greens

Greenheart Growers salad with Dijon cream

Dessert to share

Barbecued lemon ice cream with pickled Amalfi lemon and olive oil.

There’s a lot going on for £35, but the sharing format keeps the whole meal informal.

We started with a couple of cocktails, well it’s Sunday! A Pesca Bianca – East London Co. Gin, Cynar, White Peach, Basil and Notte - Tamdhu 12, Sweet Vermouth, Artichoke, Espresso, Demerara. Both were delicious cocktails, showcasing layers of flavour which we hadn’t thought about mixing – artichoke anyone???? Must remember here for some cocktails and snacks.

Snacks at Vera Glasgow

You can also add snacks before the main Sunday menu, we picked grilled olives with ham fat (£6.50).

And crispy sushi rice cake with salmon and chilli (£10).

The snacks give a pretty good indication of the cooking style at Vera. Familiar ingredients are combined with less expected flavours, so even something as simple as bread or olives is given a twist. If you’re making a lazy Sunday afternoon of it, adding a couple of these to the set menu would be an easy way to stretch lunch out over a few drinks.

Onto the main menu. It begins with caramelised onion flatbread topped with aged Comté cheese.

Flatbread might sound straightforward, but putting it at the beginning of the set menu instead of simply serving a bread basket makes it feel like a proper opening course and thats before you get into it. This isn’t simply bread, this was France in bread sweet caramelised onion and savoury aged Comté are just what our Sunday taste buds needed.

Sea bream ceviche with grape nahm jim

For the next course there’s a choice between fish and gnocchi. The seafood option is sea bream ceviche with grape nahm jim and coriander.

It’s certainly not something you’ll find on many traditional Glasgow Sunday lunch menus. Nahm jim is a Thai-style sauce typically combining sweet, sour, salty and spicy flavours, so pairing it with delicate sea bream and grape makes for a refreshing combination. It’s fresh, light and a useful contrast to the much richer porchetta that follows.

Gnocchi with harissa and black pepper

Alternatively, there’s gnocchi with harissa and black pepper.

Again, Vera avoids playing things too safe. Harissa brings warmth and to the super soft gnocchi, making this more interesting than the obligatory vegetarian pasta option that can sometimes appear on set menus.

Barbecued porchetta for Sunday lunch

The centrepiece of Sunday lunch at Vera Glasgow is the barbecued porchetta with preserved lemon gremolata.

Porchetta already delivers plenty of richness, so the preserved lemon and herbs in the gremolata make sense alongside it, bringing acidity and freshness to the meat.

It arrives with a collection of dishes for the table rather than everyone receiving an individually plated roast.

No Sunday lunch is complete without potatoes, although Vera’s version is quite different from the traditional roast tatties. Here you get confit new-season potatoes with koji dressing. Koji is perhaps better known for its role in producing ingredients such as miso, sake and soy sauce, bringing plenty of savoury umami flavour.

Barbecued lemon ice cream with olive oil

Then comes perhaps the most intriguing dish on the menu. Dessert is barbecued lemon ice cream with pickled Amalfi lemon and olive oil, designed to be shared.

Forget chocolate fondant or sticky toffee pudding, this combo of meringue and ice cream was just what was needed to end a rich and flavoursome lunch.

Is Vera Glasgow good for Sunday lunch?

If you’re looking for a traditional Sunday roast in Glasgow, Vera probably isn’t what you have in mind. But that’s also one of its strengths. There are already plenty of excellent places around Glasgow serving beef, Yorkshire puddings and roast potatoes. Vera takes the idea of a leisurely Sunday lunch in a different direction. Click here to read some of our reviews

You still get the things that make Sunday dining enjoyable, comforting food, generous sharing dishes and plenty of time around the table but with a more contemporary menu.

The porchetta provides the comforting centrepiece while ceviche, nahm jim, harissa, koji and preserved lemon make the experience noticeably different from your standard Glasgow Sunday lunch.

Vera Glasgow review: our verdict

Vera is an interesting addition to the increasingly strong Nithsdale Road and Strathbungo restaurant scene.

The Sunday offering manages to feel relaxed without being predictable. There’s enough familiarity in dishes such as flatbread, porchetta and potatoes to make the menu approachable, but combinations involving grape nahm jim, koji dressing and pickled Amalfi lemon stop things becoming ordinary.

We particularly like that Vera hasn’t simply launched another Sunday roast. Instead, it has taken the idea of gathering around a table for a leisurely Sunday meal and given it its own identity.

For anyone looking for new restaurants in Glasgow Southside, Sunday lunch on Nithsdale Road or a different Sunday dining experience in Glasgow, Vera is well worth putting on the list.

We loved the vibe, musically and food. Staff were friendly and relaxed yet professional and it was at the right pace for a relaxed Sunday. A place for get togethers, date nights and for just a glass of wine we think. We’ll be back.