Ubiquitous Chip at 40: How the restaurant has impacted on eating out in Scotland

• The Ubiquitous Chip exterior on Ashton Lane. Picture: Donald MacLeod

IT STARTED with just 500.

Forty years ago today, down a side street in Glasgow's West End, Ronnie Clydesdale opened The Ubiquitous Chip. Within six weeks it was packed; within five years it had moved to larger premises. It has been growing ever since but it's never – and this is key – lost sight of the original ethos that made The Chip (as it's affectionately known) a hub of the Glasgow scene for nearly half a century.

And the Chip's reputation extends beyond Scotland. In 2005, Saveur, an American magazine for foodies, cited it as "a groundbreaker in its native land and a model for what restaurants in many places could be if they had the courage and imagination… It dedicated itself from the start to fresh seasonal ingredients and identified their provenance on its menu, both encouraging and recognising honest food producers and harvesters in the process."

Ronnie passed away last April, and The Chip is now run by his son, Colin, and his partner, Carol Wright. They met at the restaurant, and in 1994 left to set up Stravaigin (and subsequently Stravaigin 2), which are run along principles the couple absorbed under Ronnie's tutelage.

Though he knows The Chip "inside out", Colin admits he's facing a daunting task to identify what can be tweaked without deviating from The Chip's winning formula. So far that consists of installing lobster and crab tanks, and toying with the idea of returning to an la carte menu.

He fills me in on some background: "Dad knew nothing of how to run a restaurant and had taught himself how to cook. He (really] started practising when he was in National Service, on sentry duty. They had no-one to actually sentry against, so he would scuttle off to the canteen and cook, and the rest of the sentries would come and have a slap-up feed at three in the morning.

"He had worked as a manager in a whisky bond. At half past twelve they all went out for lunch with clients, which lasted three hours. I think sobriety was not the norm. Dad realised that the guys who'd been doing this a long time tended to pick the plainer, more traditional dishes. This was at a time when posh food was either French or Italian, but the guys had chosen a much simpler way of eating.

"He based his restaurant on what he wanted to eat and what he thought the guys who were experienced in eating out wanted to eat. That was the logical bit, then it kind of goes out the window: he broke every rule going. He opened down a wee scabby lane. Everyone said, 'No chance, you've got to be on a main road.' He opened with no licence. Everyone said, 'No chance, you've got to sell alcohol.' I genuinely don't think he employed anyone who had ever worked in a restaurant before. They made it up as they went along."

Hotelier and restaurateur Ken McCulloch remembers that it was a time of great imitation – until Ronnie came along. "Listen, to call your restaurant Ubiquitous Chip in 1971, that was pretty brave! He didn't flinch from what he believed in, and that's why he got the following that he got. Ronnie was always about the produce – the freshness. And he employed some pretty interesting people. They weren't your stereotyped waiters and waitresses, they were individuals and characters, and that helps, too."

Pete Irvine, whose travel guide, Scotland the Best, consistently cites The Chip as a top Glasgow destination, says, "The Chip was a total experience. It wasn't just the food, it was a beautiful room; the ambience was always perfect. It was unique for its time. It didn't go after Michelin stars, but it was where you would go for special meals, fabulous wine, and great service, long before those things were de rigueur. Yet it was not highfalutin. You were never intimidated by the environment, the staff, or the wine list. It had that humanity about it, which is perhaps very Glasgow."

The Chip's youngest customer was surely the two-day-old mite whose parents brought him in straight out of the maternity ward. "And then he came back for his graduation," says Colin. "The Chip has been here long enough that we've actually had people who have married here and divorced here." On a sadder note, Carol adds, they've held funerals, as well, in accordance with customers' last wishes.

Is there another Scottish restaurant that can boast of serving Princess Margaret lunch and Mick Jagger dinner on the same day? On Carol's own first day the actor James Mason strolled in. She was bug-eyed, but the rest of the staff passed it off with a shrug.

No-one denies The Chip's enormous impact on the Scottish dining scene, but how has that legacy held up? Some might argue that Glasgow, with no Michelin-starred restaurants, lags behind Edinburgh, which boasts five – Martin Wishart at his eponymous restaurant; Tony Borthwick at The Plumed Horse; Jeff Bland at Number One Princes Street; Tom Kitchin, at The Kitchin; Paul Kitching of 21212 – as well as Michelin Bib Gourmand chef Neil Forbes at The Atrium.

Why is that? And are restaurant-goers in Glasgow and Edinburgh looking for different experiences?

Jeff Bland, executive chef of Number One, at the Balmoral, lives in Glasgow, so he's well placed to survey the scene from all angles. "The best crit of a restaurant is that it's full. Without that, you haven't got anything. Michelin, I love them, they're credible and you get very few duff recommendations. For me, personally, the difference is that in Edinburgh we have business seven days a week. We have bankers, brokers, business people, tourists, the Parliament. I have friends in Glasgow who on Friday, Saturday night, in a 50-seater restaurant, could do 500 meals, no problem. The problem is Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

"Food is about turnover. We're fortunate in Edinburgh to have a weekly clientle. I don't think price is an issue, people in Glasgow spend. There are a lot of restaurants and they do well. Unfortunately at the top end it seems to be hard. You've got Devonshire, you've got Brian Maul's, The Buttery, Rogano, The Chip. It's a slightly different market."

Irvine echoes those sentiments, saying, "Like London, Edinburgh has somehow generated this restaurant culture. It's to do with business accounts, corporate spending, and top-end tourism. This is a nurturing place and chef proprietors have risen to that. If they were anywhere in Scotland they would want to be here because that's where the money is. It's nevertheless quite surprising that Glasgow has never produced one Michelin restaurant. Yet Glasgow has still, in my view, got some of the really, really cool foodie experiences, like Cafezique, like Crabshakk, and like The Ubiquitous Chip. Those are strong, uniquely special brands that are all to do with the vibe – and they're accessible to all."

Funnily enough, says McCulloch, "When Ronnie opened, The Chip was probably more Edinburgh than it was Glasgow. Edinburgh did have great wee bistros and things like that, and Glasgow didn't have much of that then. Glasgow's caught up. As long as we encourage people to be concerned about where produce is coming from, concerned about the sort of people you're bringing through, what their training is like, etc, well, how can you go wrong? If Scotland's still assessing how it's doing by the amount of Michelin star restaurants it's got then we should all give up."

Back at The Chip, a year-long celebration is about to kick off. This week, in addition to the la carte menu, they're offering a four-course set menu representing the decades. There's a starter of Mallaig-landed squid, conger eel and bacon – the first dish Ronnie ever produced, in 1971. Garvalloch scallops with a potato rosti and Chambery coral sauce represents fish courses produced in the 1990s, while Perthshire wood pigeon with pearl barley mushroom risotto and a duo of mushroom cream and game sauce showcases the 21st-century version of one of The Chip's signature game dishes. For dessert, travel back to the 1980s with Hebridean carrageen snow egg with Grand Marnier.

From 7-31 March, The Chip hosts Ingr3dient, devised by Carol Wright, Neil Butler, Alasdair Gray and Debs Norton, combining interactive technology, 3D, and projections, complemented by a special four-course menu. Come September, photographer Martin Gray brings out a book tracking the social history of The Chip via the fortunes of some of its talented customers. Plans are also afoot to equip 40 lucky graduates (or adults taking "gap years") with Chip T-shirts, with the goal of seeing how many far-flung places they can take them to.

What does the future hold? Colin came up through the restaurant, is his nine-year-old son likely to follow suit? Laughing, Carol says, "Ruaraidh is very much a Clydesdale. At the moment, he says he's turning The Chip into a toyshop, but he has the food gene. There are very few people I knew who'll eat chicken feet – Ruaraidh is one, Colin is another, and Ronnie was one. He will happily eat tripe, clams, mussels – anything apart from vegetables."

If he does take over, he'll likely be serving the kids of Colin's customers. Jeff Bland observes that Glaswegians love continuity, and will stick with a place because their father went there in hisday. "The Chip is the nearest thing they have to the sort of thing you get in France, where your grandfather had the restaurant, and your father had it, and then you have it. It's that earthy, intrinsic thing. The restaurant hasn't really changed. I remember going 20 years ago, and I was there a few months ago, and it didn't really look any different."

• To find out more about this year's events, or to share your memories of The Chip, log on to www.ubiquitouschip.co.uk. The restaurant is at 12 Ashton Lane, in Glasgow. 0141 334 5007