New dog in town

After a residence at Taste Buchanan, Surfdogs, a pop-up specializing in gourmet hot dogs have found themselves a permanent home on Kilmarnock Road in Shawlands, right where Cafe Noor used to be. Open for little over a week, we pored over the descriptions on their website then wandered along with big empty bellies. For sunny days there’s seating outside and they do takeaway too.

Decor

Inside it’s a mix of 80’s boy’s bedroom and millennial hangout: black and red paint with posters of The Big Lebowski and The Never Ending Story, and life-size cardboard cut-outs of Star Wars characters and er, unvarnished wooden furniture! This is all accompanied by music from likes of The Stone Roses, The Smashing Pumpkins and…War of the Worlds(!), making this quite different from the old Cafe Noor!

The old fish tank from the previous restaurant is now utilised to showcase the available bottled beers, but the selection is limited to mainstream American craft varieties that you can find pretty much anywhere these days. Blue Moon and Goose is also on draught, and there’s also a choice of three unlimited soft drinks, some cans (including Irn-Bru) and even tea, coffee and hot chocolate.

Menu

There are nine types of loaded dogs on the menu. Some of these can be made vegetarian and even vegan. There’s a plain dog, kids-size dog and a specific vegan-only dog. Sadly the three which stood out on the website weren’t listed on the menu when we visited!

If hot dogs really aren’t your thing, there’s also a cheeseburger on offer. Sides include slaw, sweet potato fries, chicken wings and nachos but fries are included in the price of the hot dogs.

Food

We picked three loaded dogs: Nacho Dog, with smashed tortilla, salsa and queso sauce. Garden State, with salted chip stix, mixed peppers and onion plus mustard mayo and a Buffalo Dog, with buffalo sauce tossed chicken, blue cheese chunks, celery and buffalo Mayo dressing.

Each one came with tasty skinny fries. As you can see they come with lots of topping, which goes everywhere! And there was American mustard and ketchup on the table. Bib for Mr Foodie!

The juicy frankfurter was pretty substantial, the added toppings and soft bun made this a top dog. Mr C loved the creamy blue cheese on the buffalo bun while Mr Foodie was apprehensive about celery being there! He didn’t venture there but enjoyed the crunchy salt n vinegar chip stix on his – which brought back memories of the school tuck shop…

Mr Foodie eyes up his dog>>>

Overall, £27 for three dogs with fries and soft drinks – some of which are unlimited, resulted in three full happy bellies. Service was friendly but a bit slow though it’s still new and clearly a work in progress (we hear they now sell milkshakes!) so we’ll check back again soon for a proper review. Toilets not checked on this visit. Watch out for Chewie!

TL:DR

+ Tasty dogs

+ Decent prices (fries come as standard)

+ Eclectic music mix

+ Seating outside

+ Takeaway too

+ Good location on main road in Shawlands

– Still finding its feet. Will come back again in a few weeks

Location:

Surfdogs, 49 Kilmarnock Rd, Glasgow, G41 3YN.

Public transport: Stagecoach 4, First Bus 3, 29 and all 38s stop on the next block. The number 57 stops on nearby Pollokshaws Rd and the 34 and 90 stop on Minard Rd a 5 min walk away.

Both Crossmyloof and Pollokshaws East Station are a 10 minute walk away

Website: Surfdogs