Every restaurant has a pitch; Cafe Gandolfi’s is locally sourced fresh produce cooked with respect. Ok, it sounds like a well worn sock, but there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s all served to you in a lovely driftwood furniture space, with detailed stained glass panels within big windows. True, it is a nice little spot, heaving to the brim when we arrived; don’t let this be the measure of a good meal though – I’ve had a fair share of distressing lack-lustre feeds in busy places. The three of us needed a purposeful fry-up to soak up our naughty pub crawl from the night before, and to line our stomachs for the boozy afternoon ahead at the Old & Rare Whisky Show. Cafe Gandolfi have been in the breakfast business since 1979, so it should be all kinds of everything that we need….
The cappuccino £2.70 – the brew here is just how I like it, creamy robust and tonnes of flavour. 
I went for the full Scottish breakfast £10 of black pudding, beef sausage, mushrooms, grilled tomato, bacon and a potato scone with a poached egg and toasted sour dough. The menu states that it can take up to half an hour to prepare, they weren’t wrong! They squeezed every drop of that 30 minutes and it took another 15 minutes on top of that to take our order. The result was a lukewarm plate of dullness with zero personality. The tomatoes tasted washed up, the stone cold toast served no purpose but suck the saliva from my mouth – don’t get me started on the dank black pudding that was a fresh as my football boots from 1993. Everything else just seemed cold and frigid. You’d expect a bit more for something the the double digits.
The Aberdeen smoked haddie with poached egg and sour dough toast £16 was unsatisfying and low impact. It tasted like it had it’s moment in yesterday’s service. At £16 they can do better. 
The verdict:
When did I go? Feb 2017
The damage: £20/£25 per head with coffees
The good: It’s a lovely space, but not a lot else. The coffee was the best thing going for it, not the breakfast that should be in single digits.
The bad: The limp breakfast served no purpose in the pleasures of eating, but one thing it did was fill a hole for the onslaught of whisky tasting ahead of the Old and Rare Whisky Show.
Rating: 1.5/5
Would I go again? Hasn’t crossed my mind
Address: 64 Albion St, Glasgow G1 1NY
Web: https://www.cafegandolfi.com
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