Cocktail & Burger and Yelp Glasgow

A couple of weeks ago I received an email via the blog (actually through my photo website alerting me to the fact I had no obvious contact button on the blog) asking me if I would be interested in joining online community, Yelp Glasgow.  Yelp is a site that allows people to join and connect with each other while also reviewing places in and around where they live.  Not just restaurants but shops, hairdressers, garages, dentists...  Basically any business where you receive some kind of service.  It's a great idea and I've already used it to decide where to eat when I fancy somewhere I know is decent due to honest, local reviews.

I'm slowly building up my own profile now I've joined and added my review of Zizzi.  Just a week after I replied to the initial email from Chris (the Glasgow community manager), he emailed me again to tell me about Yelp Elite and invite me along to one of their events if I wanted to see what it was all about and meet some fellow foodies!  They were going to Cocktail & Burger which opened on Sauchiehall Street in November for some food tasting and cocktails.  As I hadn't met any of these people before I, rather cheekily since it was an Elite event and I was invited along, asked if it would be OK to bring along my new blog partner who also loves eating out around Glasgow.  He said that would be fine so off Roz and I went on Monday night to meet these lovely Yelp people and enjoy a burger!

Photo by Alasdair 

Me fully Yelpified with my yummy peach Daiquiri!

I wasn't sure what to expect never having been to such an event or the venue before but the place was buzzing, even on a Monday night!  At one point I think the whole restaurant was full, which speaks of the food on offer.  We had our own area at the back of the restaurant, easily spotted by the Yelp balloons and party atmosphere.  We found Chris, got our name badges, found a seat and began chatting.  Everyone was lovely and the first cocktail soon arrived!  The bar has a massive slushy machine which makes strawberry and peach daiquiris.  I sampled the peach one and it was gorgeous, so fresh tasting and zingy!  I would definitely return just for one of those babies!  (I'm an idiot and forgot my camera - devastating! - so my crappy phone pics will have to do, sorry!  I've also included some pictures by the lovely Alasdair who was the 'Photo Dude' on the night!  You can see the rest of his pictures here.  Oh and my phone battery died - bad blogger! - so Roz lent me her phone for some piccies!)

Photo by Alasdair 

Peach Daiquiri and some of the Yelp  merchandise!

We then got to sample some food, starting with chicken skewers, again delicious, just the right amount of heat for me and nice moist chicken.  The best thing was the slider though, a mini burger on a brioche bun (all their burgers come served in brioche) with amazing burger sauce oh and Stealth Fries seasoned with salt and ground black pepper - AMAZING!  We then sampled chicken wings with a super spicy smoky sauce (managable as I just had one dunk, I'm a wuss!) and a herby yoghurt sauce which was lovely.  We were then asked to choose another cocktail to sample and I couldn't resist trying the pineapple and ginger martini, yum!  (Roz was driving so I also got to sample a very nice Mojito on her behalf, thanks Roz!)

Photo by Alasdair 

Chicken wings with dips

Delish cocktails!

We enjoyed the food so much, Roz and I ordered a couple of sliders as we were still hungry (£7 for two meat ones) although I was gutted they had no pork left as that sounded divine!  Slow cooked pork belly served with Kopparberg cider onions!  I'm definitely going back for a large version of that bad boy (and with 2 for 1 on the big burgers it'd be rude not to!)  So we each had a mini lamb slammer and a mini cheese burger and more stealth fries, we couldn't resist!  I asked for my beef slider to have the blue cheese which is on the menu with the mushroom burger and they said that was no problem.  They did however get the order slightly wrong and that turned up as a large version!  No complaint here as we were still charged for the mini version as it was their mistake.

The staff were lovely, attentive and friendly and they make awesome cocktails!  I can't wait to take Nik along, he'll love it there, especially as there's a 2 for 1 deal, he loves a deal that boy!  All the Yelpers we met were lovely too, we didn't really mingle much as were were the newbies and feeling a little shy but a few people did come over to say Hi and we had a great night!

You can read all the reviews from the event here and see what everyone else had to say about it.  :)