Glasgow's Rogano restaurant celebrates 75 years of dining

One of Glasgow's oldest restaurants, it is a landmark more recognisable than almost any of the city's statues or museums. It's an institution, an art deco wonder that has survived since 1935, through different owners, economic booms and busts, changing tastes and fashions. Bars and restaurants have come and gone, but the Rogano Oyster Bar remains, dressed in its 1930s finery, oozing that inimitable charm that makes every customer secretly long to be a regular, to have the bar staff know their name and mix their favourite drink just so. It's just that kind of place.

On a wet and windy night, it's a welcome haven in a drookit city centre.

Pushing through the black and chrome doors, the sound of a young Frank Sinatra soothes frozen ears and bright, warm lights feel cosy. It's like stepping back in time. Ten minutes later I'm happy in a booth nursing a perfect gin and tonic (lemon not lime), my change delivered in a scallop shell, and suddenly the world feels like a better place. There is indeed something special about Rogano.

Next year marks the bar and restaurant's 75th anniversary and, to celebrate, a book has been produced which tells the story of Rogano and the characters who've made it what it is. It's a long history, intertwined with the city from its shipbuilding past to its deserved reputation for style. The book, the proceeds from which will go to five charities, also contains signature recipes (sole meunire, lobster thermidor and, of course, oysters among them) and trademark tipples (gin martini, or a Matahari perhaps?) so that you can create a bit of Rogano style at home. It's a lot of fuss if you think that Rogano is just another city centre eatery, albeit a nicely designed one, but in fact it's much more than that.

Rogano's status is partly due to its location – slap-bang in the city centre, visible from Buchanan Street and Queen Street but tucked away enough to hint at exclusivity – and partly due to that frontage, bold and timelessly beautiful, rendered in the wonderfully technological-sounding Vitrolite and maintained in pristine condition. It all hints at glamour and sophistication. Even on days when the weather is less than kind, the stalwarts sit out at the tables in front sipping their sauvignon blanc, kept from freezing by patio heaters and waited on by staff in white shirts and black waistcoats, their long aprons neatly tied in place.

Rogano is, and always has been, a place to be seen. Rod Stewart insists on Table 16 when he's in town and Harry Benson makes a trip in for fish soup and lemon sole every time he returns to Glasgow.

General manager Ian Smith and head chef Andy Cumming have both worked in the restaurant for 23 years. Sitting in the private dining room tucked downstairs, both men unsurprisingly will tell you that Rogano is something special.

"For me it was a love affair," says Cumming. "It still is. It's much more than a job. It's almost like being the curator of a museum somehow, you feel a responsibility for how everything looks and feels, food aside."

Rogano's first incarnation was as the Bodega Spanish Wine Cellar opened in 1874. Owned by James Henry Roger and his silent partner Mr Anderson (the current name comes from ROGer and ANO to represent "ANOther"), in 1935 the restaurant was bought by Donald Grant. It was under Grant that Rogano became the style icon that it's remained.

Grant instructed that his new restaurant should be fitted in a style similar to the Cunard liner the Queen Mary, which had just been built on the Clyde by John Brown & Co of Clydebank. Stained glass and chrome, a fantasy seascape in plasterwork, mermaids and seashells, Rogano was made resplendent in walnut and burr.

The restaurant remained largely untouched from Grant's day until the early 1980s, when it was bought by Ken McCulloch (current partner in the Dakota Hotels and one of Scotland's most celebrated hoteliers with Malmaison and One Devonshire Gardens to his credit) and Allied Breweries. Blue asbestos was found on the site, so the place was largely taken apart, creating a space for dining downstairs and halving the size of the bar on the ground floor so that there was room for more restaurant seating. The work was major, but so painstaking was the remodelling that when the restaurant reopened in 1984, customers new and old felt that nothing had really changed.

"The changes (in the 1980s] were so sympathetic that even the regular customers still regarded it as Rogano," says Cumming. "The consistency of how it looks is just as important for some people as what they're served."

Donald Grant did not just influence how the restaurant looked, he also left a legacy of using Scottish produce which has survived. During the 1940s and 1950s, with Grant at the helm, the restaurant had its own stretch of river for salmon, it brought lobsters from Brora and oysters from Portpatrick. Under Cumming, nothing much has changed. The oysters come from Loch Etive and Cumbrae, the fish from Troon, Peterhead and Scrabster.

Rogano was last sold in 2006 and is now owned by the Mortimer family. Both Cumming and Smith feel that it's in safe hands, with owners devoted to its future as well as celebrating its past. And although times change, the key to Rogano is, according to both men, doing things the way they've always been done.

Cumming can still remember what it was like walking through the doors for the first time when he came for a job as a chef de partie more than 20 years ago. "For a couple of years before, while I was at college in Glasgow, I'd walk past and look at the menu. When the opportunity of a job came up, and it was quite by chance, I grabbed it. I had to get this job. But I was scared, too. I knew the Rogano reputation. Even now, walking through the doors in the morning, no matter what happened the day before, no matter that you might be tired, something happens. You change into your whites and you're like a different person. It's almost like going on stage."

Back out front, harassed businesspeople with their pull-along cases are eased out of raincoats and into plush seats and older women dressed to the nines swither over their choice of cocktail.

"We learned a lot about service from a great man called John Mitchell," says Ian Smith, who as general manager looks after Rogano's 70 staff. Mitchell was a barman at Rogano in the 1950s who returned to run the bar after the refurbishment in the 1980s. "I don't know how he never got fed up saying to people 'How's the weather?' or 'How is it out there?' but he never did. He'd do it over and over again but the customers never knew. He got to know people because he knew how to start a simple conversation without being intrusive.

"Everyone wants to be recognised and welcomed. The bar staff is the front line because they're the first to see people as they come in. It's always nice to get a hello and see a friendly face."

It's not just the service that's stayed the same – the drinks and the menu, like the CD collection, are classic rather than contemporary.

"There's a book of cocktails that sits behind the bar and is never moved," says Smith. "There are so many drinks that we'll never take off the menu – martinis and champagne cocktails. We have to keep up with the times, so what we serve has evolved, but it's not all changed. We make things in a classic way."

Rogano isn't a museum, but it's the kind of bar they just don't make anymore.

Rogano, 11 Exchange Place, Glasgow (reservations: 0141-248 4055); Rogano: Glasgow's Favourite Restaurant is published by Black & White Publishing on Monday, priced 30. All proceeds from sales of the book will be split between five charities: the Beatson Oncology Centre, the British Heart Foundation, the Royal Institute for the Blind, Cash for Kids and The Variety Club UK

This article was first published in The Scotsman on December 5, 2009