Restaurant review: Stunning views at the Urban Beach don’t mask the real issues

By Murray Chalmers

September 4 2021, 6:01am

One of Dundee’s newest restaurants leaves a bitter taste in the mouth for Murray.

“Most people miss opportunity because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work”. Thomas A Edison.

America’s greatest inventor really hit the impeccably-designed nail on the head with this quote, which sprung to mind as we finally sat at a table at the newish Urban Beach café on the site of the old Glass Pavilion in Broughty Ferry.

Sadly, Edison’s 19th-Century statement seems to fit this frustratingly 2021 experience perfectly, even if it wasn’t written as he watched waiting staff scurry around aimlessly whilst customers waited in the hot Ferry sun for the chance to order a flat white and a grilled chicken ciabatta.

More positively, and because I think this place remains a dining hotspot just waiting to happen, I could just as easily have channelled Churchill who said “a pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty”, a statement for our times if ever there was one.

One of the major difficulties facing the hospitality industry right now is that they just can’t get the staff; the difficulty here at the Glass Pavilion is that the staff they do have need training – and they need it fast.

This was yet another incredibly frustrating experience here, a place which has SUCH huge potential that I wish I could buy it myself. All it needs is some structure and vision and that applies to the menu as much as it does to the service.

But who’s going to supply that at a time when hospitality is on its knees? Firstly, that new name.

There is an Urban Beach in Dundee, a civic amenity which opened last month and got a reasonable amount of publicity. There is sand. There is seating. There were deckchairs in a nice photo op. Although I haven’t visited yet it seems to be what it says it is – a beach in an urban environment. So far so good.

There is also an Urban Beach in Broughty Ferry, but this urban beach isn’t actually a beach – it’s a restaurant on the site of what I (and probably everyone else) still think of as the Glass Pavilion.

To be fair, the real new title is Urban Beach@The Glass Pavilion which is a trifle unwieldy and more of a mouthful than even the biggest uneaten ciabatta on offer here.

I assumed there’s a link between the two urban beaches, because what are the chances of two new beaches falling to Earth in Dundee at the same time? But a call to the restaurant showed there is no link to the sandy beach next to the V&A, although apparently many others had been asking the same question. Isn’t this all a bit…. odd?

I’d actually been here once before in its new incarnation but decided not to review it because it was clear that they had to get their act together. Nothing was really functioning properly and the food wasn’t very good.

Returning weeks later it pains me to report that nothing is really functioning properly and the food isn’t very good. The amount of uneaten food left on other tables is proof that things desperately need to change here.

But first we sat. And we sat. And we sat a bit longer. We knew it was a restaurant because we saw people eating.

We knew there were staff because we saw them inside the building, although on one of the hottest days of the year – when everyone wanted to sit outside –there seemed to be one waiter designated for this huge expanse.

Still, we sat and we sat, wondering just how long it might take for a quick lunch to become high tea.

Why is this so painful to write? Quite simply, this restaurant deserves better.
Its location – right across from the wonderful sand dunes of Broughty Ferry – means that you can easily feel that you’re eating in an outdoor café in Santa Monica.

On this visit the sun shone so brightly that the apartment block right next door (site of the old Sands nightclub, for those of the same vintage as me) could have easily been the location for an episode of Miami Vice. As I rolled up my sleeves in sympathy, it gleamed. This is a very special site for a restaurant.

Logistically I don’t understand why the relatively few outside tables – coffees to the left, food to the right – are huddled sideways against a wall. Yes, you still get that amazing view – but there is so much of the terrace, or “beach”, left unused and I think a spatial design rethink is in order.

Although I’d asked for an outside table when booking we were directed inside, until I pointed out a table which was empty; given the choice who would want to sit inside when you could have this view?

Service was friendly but in truth it was all over the place – it’s just all over the place didn’t reach towards us or anyone else sitting outside.

Eventually we placed our order and the minute we did our menus were handed down to the next table and then to the one next to them. Print more menus! And give them a wipe before passing them on!

I debated long and hard before writing about all this because, as is perfectly evident now, our restaurants, cafes and bars are in trouble. There’s just no staff.

This isn’t a problem solely faced by the Glass Pavilion and I do realise that an influx of bookings on a hot day is going to threaten to over-run the waiting staff and the kitchen. It’s how you deal with it that counts.

The staff here just aren’t trained enough, and there seemed to be no one directing them. The bulk of them remained indoors – which was relatively empty – while the one guy worked the whole of the outside area.

He was occasionally joined by the barman who delivered our drinks order – a Coke and a water – 20 minutes after we had placed it. This on a baking hot day, so hot that I might have drunk from the dog bowl left beside our table had the drinks not appeared when they did.

The food

The food is also odd. Although the menu is pretty standard cafe fare, there are a few signs that this kitchen wants to aim higher – but those signs aren’t followed through in the actual food.

My sister Elaine chose a flatbread with lamb kofta, spiced onions, mint yoghurt and slaw (£8.50). The kofta were dry as stone and the flatbread was so undercooked we thought it was raw.

However, a closer look did reveal some grill marks – but not enough to dispel the taste of raw dough. The portion was reasonably large (as it should be for £8.50) but much of it was left uneaten, as it also was on the adjoining table to ours.

By now the day had acquired a drama that a simple lunch in the sun usually wouldn’t merit. We had ordered at the table, as had our neighbours who, with every mistake, kept smiling conspiratorially at us in a “we’re all in this together” way.

The next table down had no such luck and were left sitting unattended for ages – until they were told that they had to go inside to order, which clearly wasn’t the case.

I was eating my bouillabaisse (£8.50) when this happened – a dish I’d seen promoted on social media as that week’s special and yet, when I asked the waiter about it, I was told there were no specials.

In a re-enactment of Victoria Wood’s famous ‘two soups’ sketch he said he would go back inside to check but I have to say I wanted to grab him and beg him not to leave us alone again. By now the inside of the restaurant had become akin to a Bermuda Triangle for we alfresco diners – they go in but they just never come out.

Lamb kofta flatbread with spiced onions, mint yoghurt and slaw.

Anyway, it turned out that bouillabaisse WAS actually a special and was available, so really I had to order it after causing such a fracas.

Before it arrived my sister, who is a chef, commented that it was very cheap for a bouillabaisse and of course there turned out to be a reason for that because this wasn’t really bouillabaisse.

Look, no one is expecting to be transported to Marseille when ordering such a dish in Broughty Ferry. And it was a genuine delight to find bouillabaisse on a menu which tends towards the pedestrian. But bouillabaisse has parsley as an intrinsic ingredient, not whole stems of basil thrown over the top to conjure up the sun.

Bouillabaisse has the bread and rouille served on the side, not dunked in the bottom of the bowl where it goes claggy, like eating garlicky fuzzy felt.

Bouillabaisse has a freshness and subtlety that comes from the vegetables, herbs and spices used in the stock, and from the fish itself – not the tomatoes. This wasn’t horrible but it was reductive and mundane.

The verdict

I know this might be hard to believe but I genuinely want this place to do well. When it closed it felt wrong, and it’s so good that it’s reopened. This location is unbelievably special. But restaurants can’t survive on the view alone.

Service has to be good and the menu has to be focussed and driven to offer great food at reasonable prices. This isn’t happening here but I really hope it does because if they get their act together this could be a major addition to Dundee’s dining scene.

Right now it’s a view and a room looking at a beach – and however urban that is, that’s just not enough.