If one wants an unusual experience to satisfy a jaded café palate, this place is jolly well it.
Outside is a magnificent gothic Ibrox church. Inside is the long-established and always busy Glasgow Climbing Centre. Walking up the stairs and through the arched doorway opens up an idiosyncratic vista of activity on the multiple climbing walls that have been retrofitted to the superb dark oak and stone interior of the church. If one was a giant, this would be somewhat akin to turning over a moody gothic pebble to find a wriggling, non-stop ecosystem of ascending, descending, relentless active creatures. In Ibrox!
The interior with its autobelays and psychedelically spattered handholds appears much the same as when I used to bring my own small girl-monkey here 15 years ago. Today, whilst you sup your beverage the casual skills on display in the free wall-show are still impressive and provide endless entertainment unlike any other nearby café. Except the one at the Maryhill Climbing Academy. But at GCC one can also enjoy the interior height and space (constantly and effortlessly scaled by quite ordinary-looking Glaswegians), spectacular support arches, decorative carved trills, stalactites and flourishes of the ceiling woodwork. Why can’t they get some of the hyperactive inhabitants to rappel across and do the dusting though?
FlavourBomb Kitchen is on the mezzanine level, reached by a spiral staircase which was quite enough ascending for me. From the long bar running the width of the floor, or the hard chairs, salvaged pews and practical tables on two levels the kinetic antics of the long-armed creatures who inhabit the GCC can be delightfully observed whilst one idles, munching, on the spacious platform which has been decorated with homemade enthusiasm and resembles the common room of a youth hostel. I found this a most satisfying contrast with the gloriously huge stained glass window.
The FBK kitchen itself looks basic, but the food that emerges is great. FBK serves zingy, nourishing nosh akin to a delightful festival food truck that one stumbles towards in the wee hours. But far better and cheaper. The healthily simian users of the centre need calories fast and bold tastes to bust through the adrenaline. FBK provides them. Ciabattas, nachos, sourdough toasties, pancakes and that sort of thing come out at a calm, constant pace. Helpings are chunky. Everything Sancho and I sampled was tasty, well balanced and of proportionate size to the efforts of the inhabitants. The house blend is currently a Faodail roast: a more interesting than usual Brazilian. Not especially intriguing to my experienced gob but served at the correct strength in assorted mugs and cups. Faodail Roastery beans are on sale if you like them. I considered £12.80 for coffee and haggis nachos very reasonable indeed, as the prices generally are in FBK. The FBK opening hours, (brunch served til 21.00 on weekdays) and some free parking spots on this part of Paisley Road West if you’re quick make FBK an ideal way-station for us PMiaV’s. One can slope off here from the M8 at the Govan exit and then swiftly return to your travails, sated.
Sancho voiced an unfounded concern about FBK, one that I nonchalantly swatted away with my superior knowledge of the venue. No, FBK does not smell ‘all sweaty’, it smells of climbing chalk and perseverance. It is in fact a delightfully spacious eyrie of lip-smacking nourishment.
I also managed to make poor Sancho understand that the unusually long arms and legs of the inhabitants were to be expected. They had of course been pre-stretched by local Oompa-Loompas. She’d seen exactly this kind of thing in that documentary about the chocolate factory.
The FBK mezzanine features a fire exit with emergency stairs to the ground floor. Why? Everyone here could swarm out vertically in seconds. Except me. But then I do appear to be one step less evolved than the creatures throwing themselves around within GCC.
FlavourBomb Kitchen is one of the most interesting places to drink coffee and eat great quality affordable food in Glasgow. Clamber in.
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