Alea casino restaurant review August 11

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Red Leaf – Alea Casino

Posted by on August 11, 2013 in Closed Down | Leave a comment

I’ve always fancied myself as a bond girl…a rather chunky short bond girl, but a bond girl none the less. So it was with some excitement that I arranged to visit Alea casino for dinner and gambling last night….I had visions of long designer dress, diamonds, cocktails and putting a £50,000 chip on black.

The Red Leaf restaurant is located up 2 sets of escalators on the top floor of the Alea. The decor in the main dining room is actually very upmarket with gorgeous tones of beige and brown with hints of gold and cream. The lighting was one of my favourite features, the beautiful groups of chandeliers  really gave a lovely shabby chic feel. The interior however paled into the background to the view which can only be described as spectacular. From our table we could see the whole way down the Clyde to the Clyde Arc bridge and the SECC. 


 

Upon being seated I asked my standard first question in a new restaurant…’Do you have a cocktail menu?’ I’m always happy with the answer is yes. I opted for the amazing mango and pear Oriental Sunset and began perusing the menu. The menu is a standard 3 courses for £20  – beware of this tho as lots of the dishes had supplements. To be honest this wasn’t an issue for me as it was a Saturday night out and am happy to pay more as long as the food is worth the cost.
To start with I opted for the Crisp Fried Haggis Bon Bons served with Arran mustard and Whisky dip which was quite tasty, it was a reasonably small portion with 5 bon bon which were bite size. It’s not the nicest haggis starter I have ever had and i’m pretty sure that they were bought in and not made in house. It was however a really pleasant start to the meal.
To follow I choose the Poached Smoked Haddock with Soft Poached Egg, Spring Onion and Crushed New Potatoes with a Chive Hollandaise. The fish was perfectly cooked, soft with just a little bite to it and was perfect with the light creamy hollandaise. My only slight negative with this dish was the crushed potatoes, I wasn’t crazy about them – I think it perhaps would of been nicer with maybe a chive mash.

I’m a little bit of a food grazer – I like to try little bits of everything so for dessert I opted for the Taster plate, a selection of 5 miniature desserts from the menu. This was probably my least favourite dish – I am sure this was because we had to wait 45 minutes for its arrival, there was a delay in the check being put through. So by the time it arrived I was kind of over it.  My second minor grumble with the dessert was it just placed in front of me with no explanation as to what was on my plate. I managed to work out what 3 out of 5 were and the other 2 I just asked the waitress when she came back. The sticky toffee pudding was my favourite – so that is definitely what I would choose if I went back.

After dinner we made our way to the roulette table – it wasn’t quite Monte Carlo but if you ignored the hen night and the particularly awful and loud cabaret singer it wasn’t too bad, my advise is wear what you want it’s basically whatever you want to wear…I was reasonably dressed up and didn’t feel out of place, equally there were women in jeans and flat ballet shoes too.
All in all a delicious meal and a fun night. The food was much better than we expected and it turns out 5 Oriental Sunset cocktail will give you a raging hangover the next day.
Viva Glasvegas!