Terin C.
Yelp
My husband and I visited this place on our first night in Glasgow.
Sorry, I have to marvel at that for a moment. I've been to Glasgow. How awesome.
Anyway, we had been traveling for the better part of the day, and had been walking for the better part of the night, just sight seeing and enjoying the city... But then it came time, as it sometimes does, to forage for food. I was a bit worried that traveling to a different country would be hell on my diet since I'm a terminal vegetarian and I don't know how different places treat people like me. I know the internet at large likes to play rounds of kick the vegetarian on open forums, and in the Midwest servers really love to make sure I know that they hate me for asking to keep the cheese off of my sandwiches... But I've been relatively lucky in that I live in Southern California, and vegetarianism is sort of the "in thing" here. Which comes with its own set of problems, I can assure you, but at least those problems don't include not being able to eat ever.
In any case, I don't think my apprehensions were unwarranted.
But you know what? The British diet is not a "foreign diet" the way I had imagined it could be. It's just a little different. Visiting Scotland, in that way, was more like visiting a cousin's home for dinner rather than visiting an entire different family altogether. You know what I mean. You go to your aunt's house, and she still makes your grandmother's special pie recipe just the same way your mother does. She puts a half cup of cream in the mashed potatoes just like you were taught to do. Your friend's mom, on the other hand, serves bok choy with rice noodles, and you're like "WTF, my mom never made this..."
Except in Scotland I believe you say "mum", which, okay, is a little foreign, but then no one eats vernacular variations, and this is a food review after all, so let's get back to that.
Mono was, by far, the best vegetarian restaurant I've eaten at in a long time. Which was a little disappointing, as you can imagine, because I don't live in Scotland. I don't even live on a coast that shares an ocean with Scotland. However, too much of a good thing can be a bad thing, and since now I'm left with an idealized memory of this place, I can recall it with all the poetry of a lost love... especially since, in a way, that is kind of what I feel. I had a brief and torrid love affair with Mono, visiting twice during my two day stay in Glasgow - indeed the only restaurant in all of the UK that we visited more than once. I have tasted perfection, and it turns out perfection is a perfectly made falafel sandwich. In Scotland. CRUEL FATE!
I half feel that this place disappears and returns on a whim, like an enchanted traveling circus, and if I ever tried to return to the spot all I would find would be wind howling through an empty courtyard. I can only hope that one day it finds itself back to me.