3 Best Restaurants in Glasgow, Scotland

Anything but a shack, this intimate dining room has heavy wooden tables and chairs, an elegantly ornate ceiling, and a bar so shiny and inviting that it seems to almost insist you have a drink. The food comes from the sea—oysters, lobster, and squid—and you can have your choice served iced, grilled, roasted, or battered. The fish varies daily according to the day's catch, and only local and sustainably sourced Scottish seafood is featured. The fish sandwich and crab cakes are favorites on the lunch menu. In the evening, mussels and scallops draw the eye. The buzz of conversation and the perfectly modulated music create the right atmosphere. Reservations are essential.

A 19th-century inn turned into an elegant restaurant, the Finnieston retains the dark wood and narrow cubicles of earlier times, but today it is one of the new high-quality seafood restaurants that have transformed the faded Finnieston area into a fashionable district. The menu allows you to choose the fish and how it is prepared, the sauce, and salad or vegetable sides. You can also eat in the bar, but wherever you sit, choose from the enormous menu of fine cocktails and an especially lengthy gin selection with over 50 options.

West-coast shellfish farmers own this sleek restaurant and feed their customers incredibly succulent oysters, scallops, and mussels. The pots of mussels, steamed to order and served with any of a number of sauces, are revelatory, and scallops, prawns, and oysters come together in a wonderful seafood pasta. The surroundings are simple but stylish, with white walls, cool ceramic tiles, wood floors, and wooden furniture. Another plus is the staff, who are helpful and unpretentious. This is where locals take their favorite out-of-towners, including for lunchtime specials and pretheater menus that are a very good value.