'Delightful' Scottish wine bar named best in Scotland at national awards
Less than a year after it opened, a Scots Spanish wine bar and small plates restaurant has added another award to the cabinet. Rosalind Erskine chatted to one of the owners and head chef about the win, plans for their first birthday and opening a new venue.
“We did 90 per cent of the restaurant fitting ourselves,” said Conor McGeady as he settled into a booth in Corner Shop, a restaurant he opened along with business partners Matthew Mustard and Gary Mckernan in April 2025.
It’s a small stylish space on Old Dumbarton Road, in Glasgow’s west end. Billed as a Basque and Catalan-inspired wine bar (though Mr McGeady wants it to be known as purely Spanish inspired) it is Mr McGeady’s first foray into his own venue having worked at some of Glasgow’s best restaurants over the years. The team’s blood, sweat and tears went into opening last spring, transforming it from a Grain and Grind coffee shop into this minimalist restaurant.
Not long after opening, Corner Shop garnered rave reviews and won new business of the year at the 2025 Scottish Licenced Trade News (SLTN) awards. Now they’ve just picked up a Conde Nast Best Restaurants in the UK award for Scotland.
Of this head chef Alex Brady said: “It’s amazing for the team for all the hard work they do in such a small space. It’s good to be recognised as one of the best in the UK. It’s a good motivator for all the plans we have this summer. While Mr McGeady added: “It’s amazing to be recognised along with some of the best in UK hospitality. It’s such an honour as it’s a huge globally recognised publication and it came as such a shock to us but we couldn’t be more grateful or over the moon.”
When asked if a Michelin recommendation was the next step for Corner Shop, Mr Brady said: “The majority of our kitchen team and front of house team have been involved with restaurants that have been included in the Michelin Guide. That’s where most of our training comes from. Having worked in those environments and learned from those environments it’s very much on our radar to be part of that. Ultimately we’re a 30 cover restaurant with a corridor as a kitchen doing what we do and we love this space. That’s why it’s so exciting as it’s a tiny place.”
Mr McGeady added: “It’s where we see ourselves wanting to be. It’s the standards we uphold here. It’s a globally recognised mark of quality and we’d like to sit alongside that. If that comes, it’ll come when it comes.”
As for the restaurant theme, the team were set on a Spanish/Basque inspired restaurant as they spotted a gap in the market for good quality, seasonal tapas style food in Glasgow with a menu that “can change from lunch to dinner.” It’s no coincidence that Dogstar, chef James Murray’s restaurant, opened in Leith not long after Corner Shop. San Sabastian inspired, it seems like a little slice of Spain is of the moment right now.
Mr Brady agreed, saying: “Particularly in London, most things take time trickling up to the north of England and eventually get to Glasgow and Edinburgh but I think with certain restaurants in London, unless you knew Brat was Basque inspired you wouldn’t really know from going there, apart from the Basque cheesecake and now the people who own Barrafina (in London) have just opened a new Spanish restaurant and it’s been recognised by Michelin. I definitely think that Spanish food is the trend at the moment. French bistros will be the next thing that’s coming, and there’s a few places already inspired by them in Glasgow (such as The Clarence and Eleven Fifty Five).
Mr McGeady said it felt like they’ve kicked started the trend in Glasgow, saying: “Food goes through trends and since we’ve opened in Glasgow we’ve noticed other people doing similar menus to us. We’re just cooking food we love to eat and what we enjoy on holiday. I feel I made a mistake opening and saying it’s a Basque Catalan inspired restaurant as a lot of food we do covers the whole of Spain.
“It’s just a reflection of when we had a loose idea of concept combined with drinks and Alex’s menu - we knew there was a gap in the market. It’s super nice and super humbling to be still getting great feedback. The opening weekend, you couldn't get a booking here, we were chockablock.”
Mr Brady added: “You need to respect people’s food traditions as well. For us, we need to do an interesting take on that as well as being respectful of traditions. It’s interesting food to cook, very produce led and we work with good Scottish suppliers to do it justice.
“It’s important, as a neighbourhood restaurant, to make sure that when people come in they can still have their favourite dishes but they can also try something new. They don’t have to wait six months between visits to get something new. We have a small kitchen that doesn’t hold a lot of produce. It gives us that scope to try something then quickly fire it on the menu.”
For the year anniversary of Corner Shop the team will announce celebrations soon but are planning to put on different specials and dishes that have been popular since they first opened as well as a friends and family service. “We definitely want to have a big shout out to this being one year on,” said Mr McGeady. “We have achieved a lot in the first year but we’ve got aspirations to keep going this year.”
Not one to rest on his laurels, Mr McGeady is not only planning this year’s West End Beer Festival back at its original venue of Cafe Source Too at Hillhead Sports Club, but he’s also planning on opening a new bar in Glasgow’s southside. Located on Pollockshaws Road on the site of Marchtown wine bar, plans are still very loose just now but he said: “It’s not going to be a Corner Shop. It’ll still be a neighbourhood bar but completely different to what we do here.”
Mr Brady said they still want to offer people the chance to have dinner “in whatever capacity that may be,” adding: “It won’t be picky bits and stuff like that. We want people to stay and eat as there’s a lack of that in that area. It definitely won’t be Spanish.”
While Mr McGeady explained the ever-evolving ideas they’ve had for the space: “It started with us wanting to open a dive bar but an elevated dive bar, which might now be in the basement as we want to open a basement bar. Corner Shop was going to be a wine bar that did plates of meat and cheese but now, 12 months later, we’ve won all these awards and we want to sit alongside the best restaurants in Glasgow. So as soon as we said we were going to open a dive bar, I knew as soon as we started talking about food we’d be like ‘well if we’re going to do food, we’re going to do it well.’ I think we can have that dive bar vibe with frozen cocktails and cool, fun stuff and still have elevated plates of food. There’s no reason we can’t do both.”
It’s a busy time for the team, but Mr McGeady said they’ve come into 2026 with big plans and a reset. And if 2025 is anything to go by, they’re only going to go from strength to strength.
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