The legendary Rogano restaurant in Glasgow, Scotland, opened in 1935 at the same time as the great Cunard liner Queen Mary was being built in the city’s Clydebank shipyards.
Decorated in the same art deco style, the ocean-liner inspired restaurant, bar and basement café served the finest fish and seafood in the world from Scottish waters.
According to the historical site Lost Glasgow, legend has it that the foremen from John Brown shipyards paid their bar bills at Rogano with 'borrowed' lengths of the expensive burr walnut and bird's eye maple paneling specified for the liner that had somehow escaped the yard. During the 1940s and 1950s, the restaurant had its own stretch of river to supply its fresh salmon and brought in lobsters from Brora and oysters from Portpatrick. The smartest place in town, Rogano was also a popular watering hole. Its most famous bartender was John Mitchell, who started working there as a pageboy in 1938, moved on to other Scottish establishments, and returned to head the bar team at Rogano in the 1990s. In its decades of business, the restaurant welcomed visiting celebrities like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Rod Stewart, Jude Law, Mick Jagger, David Bowie and Harvey Keitel. Rogano was featured in an episode of celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown program, where he shared oysters and lobster thermidor with Scottish comedian Janey Godley. Other celebrities to have visited Rogano included pop star Kylie Minogue, who ordered mussels and left her waiter so starstruck he could only carry one starter at a time out of fear of dropping the plates.
Actress Keira Knightley visited every night for two weeks to eat scrambled eggs and smoked salmon while filming the 2005 drama The Jacket in Glasgow.
This art deco jewel closed in 2020 during the Covid pandemic and has not re-opened.
The Queen Mary liner retired from service in 1967 and is now permanently docked as a tourist attraction in Long Beach, California.
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