Christmas at Gamba: best December menu

The Gamba December a la carte and December set menus (recommended for tables of eight or more) are ready for you to feast your eyes on and this year Derek has pulled out all the stops as usual, to create the best Christmas menu in Glasgow, and not only that but we’re open for dinner this year on Christmas Eve and Hogmanay from 4pm to 8:30pm.

That’s why we’re the best restaurant for Christmas, and you can book your table here.

On the a la carte to start, we’ve got cracking dishes like our famous Gamba Fish Soup with white crabmeat, stem ginger, coriander, prawn dumplings, and Lindisfarne Rock Oysters, over crushed ice, natural, apple & white balsamic.

Our December Mains include Whole Roasted Sea Bream, garlic-soaked bell peppers, Norwegian prawns, cashew nuts, aged balsamic, and Wild Halibut, Savoy cabbage, poached king prawns, langoustine bisque, with sugarsnap peas.

Get ready to agonise over desserts include Christmas Pudding, Creme Brûlée, and Calvados ice cream.

Among the set menu starters are Shelfish Cocktail, Crab, prawn, brown shrimp, crayfish tails, spices, lemon, and Smooth Parfait of Chicken Livers, toasted sourdough, red onion, apricot & port jam.

Mains include King Scallops & Monkfish, Ginger & spring onions, fish sauce, Tamari & lemon, steamed in paper, and Fillet of Scotch Beef Au poivre, green peppercorns, oyster mushrooms.

And to finish, we have a selection of Christmas desserts like Peanut butter & chocolate mousse, Crème fraiche sorbet, salted caramel.

 Why do we like to eat food at Christmas?

Figgy pudding is mentioned in the Christmas carol and you don’t need us to tell you that Christmas is a time for feasting and for celebrating all that is wonderful about food.  

 Feasting at the midwinter solstice is probably as old a tradition as there have been people living on the British Isles. From the Normans to the Tudors, Christmas dinner has pretty much continued in the same vain. The rich ate meat, especially peacock and boar, while scraps of meat in porridge did for the poor, or perhaps they killed and ate a chicken instead.  Other Christmas menu favourites included Frumenty  - minced mutton, onions, currants, wines and spices.

Christmas turkeys reached Britain in the 16th century, and Henry VIII is purported to have been the first monarch to eat one. The Puritans turned their noses up disapprovingly at feasting at Christmas of course, but by the 18th century, people were getting in the Christmas spirit once again.

Pies played a starring role in Christmas food for a long time during the 18th Century. It was traditional to bake a rich and long-lasting meat pie to send to your relatives with pigeon, partridge, chicken, goose and turkey baked into a solid crust. Then the Christmas baton was passed to the Victorians, and you can see many mentions of it in Charles Dickens’ novels, like A Christmas Carol.

Aside from a few 20th-century additions like cranberry sauce, Christmas dinner kind of remained unchanged, yet more and more people do like to put their own take on Christmas, and not just plump for the obvious Turkey at Christmas. It’s a celebration of all food, and that’s what we do at Gamba.

Why we eat more in winter

Did you know that cold weather stimulates our survival impulse? Long before we had cosy homes and central heating, winter could be treacherous for humans, and autumn’s harvest determined how much food was available throughout the colder months. Once those supplies were spent, other food was scarce unless you were rich.  

That’s why the urge to binge on food at the first hint of a dip in temperatures weather might be deeply ingrained in us psychologically and biologically.

It’s a survival impulse we have inherited from a time when our bodies would have stored up as many calories as they could to help us survive in times of scarcity – like wild animals gaining more body fat in preparation for hibernation.

Winter can give us the blues

Shorter days mean sunlight is rationed in winter, and as it’s a source of vitamin D, it can therefore be lacking in our systems. We may also experience lower levels of serotonin, a neurotransmitter associated to pleasure and well-being that is likewise triggered by sunlight exposure.

Both these deficiencies have been linked to the onset of Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD: a form of depression associated with the shorter days of winter which affects many people in countries where winter brings increased darkness.

Studies have shown that people suffering from SAD tend to crave carbohydrates, because they help the body use tryptophan, an amino acid which can be converted into serotonin to boost depleting levels in the blood.

But, as we all know, eating plenty of foods rich in tryptophan, like leafy greens, poultry, seafood and broccoli is also key when it comes to aiding this process.

History of Christmas in Scotland

Celtic Pagans celebrated around the time of the Winter Solstice (December 22nd), as dictated by the shortest day of the year, with festivities to brighten the dark winter days, as well as please the gods so that the sun would come back again.

The Viking raids of Scotland began in the late 700s AD, settling from the 8th–15th century, and with them came their way of celebrating the winter solstice, called Jól – an old Norse term that has its roots in the time of Yule, the pagan festivities that took place across what would later become Christmastime.

Why Christmas was banned in Scotland

Christmas was banned in Scotland for almost four centuries.

Christmas in Scotland had been a religious feasting day before 1560 and the Reformation. It was then that the church that took a very dim view of anything with a Roman Catholic connection and so the Scottish Parliament passed a law in 1640 that made celebrating Yule illegal – even the baking of Yule bread was a criminal act.

Even after Charles II’s restoration, celebrating Christmas was still frowned upon in Scotland for a long time. In fact, it wasn’t until 1958 that 25 December became a Scottish public holiday. That’s perhaps why Hogmanay and New Year celebrations in Scotland are so important, with Boxing Day and New Year’s Day achieving public holiday status in 1974.

Book your table for Christmas at Gamba here