Bacchus Cafe Bar

A really friendly bar with a great selection of good quality food & drinks. Also has great bands including the Sunday afternoon acoustic session.

I struggle with this bar — I want to like it, but it continues to disappoint.
I only ever come here at lunchtime, so perhaps my review is tainted.
The service is slow, maybe due to so few bar and waiting staff. The décor is nice and the staff always pleasant.
While the food is good, it takes an age to arrive (30 mins for a burger). It’s not expensive, so this pushes it up another 0.5 stars.
I’ll come back in a wee while when I’m less frazzled and maybe the relaxed atmosphere will strike a chord.
But it feels like it’s lost it’s enthusiasm and in a bit of a rut. Great if you’re in no rush.
Sadly, my star rating can’t be better when I look at other places close by.

My partner and I are living in Scotland for the year while attending university, so as a couple of American outsiders, I must say we felt so very welcomed here at Bacchus. Yay!
The prices were so reasonable, the music was good, and was at just the right volume, the crowd was happy and sociable, our server (Kat) was very friendly and personable, and our food was really, really good! Restaurant quality, truly.
If you find yourself in the city center in Glasgow, I absolutely recommend dropping in and having a few drinks and a great meal.

We decided to visit Glasgow on a whim to do some bar hopping last night. Since we didn’t have a plan for dinner we wanted to see what Unilocal had to say about places in our vicinity and Bacchus came up as our top choice due to the price and reviews.
Thanks fellow Unilocalers! You did not disappoint!
Our server was super nice and offered tons of great information on the bars in the area steering us to the place to «pre-​funk» before the nightclubs opened. She did a great job of it too!
I had the beef stroganoff for dinner (omg…so creamy and good — I’d have licked my bowl clean if it weren’t for my beard) with the pea & ham soup as a starter (also tasted perfect). My partner had the salmon with the blood pudding tempura as a starter (both were sooooooo good). The dinners were top notch restaurant food for an AMAZING price.
We recommend this place, for sure.

I love this bar. I have a real hard time finding any fault. There isn’t a menu item that I’ve tasted that I wouldn’t try again. The drink selection in brilliant. Being an ale man, I would like to see some of those, but hey, Guiness will do me fine.
The staff here are some of the best around, always ready for a laugh and bit of chat.
I visit Bacchus almost too often.

Bacchus is squirreled away on Glassford street next to the mass of bars and eateries on Albion. So, why should anyone walk the couple blocks to this location?
The décor is much of a muchness. Very similar to the Blythswood establishments of The Bunker or Lowdown. Standard dark wood and leather seating. Not too sure about the flags on the ceiling — a bad holdover from the World Cup?
The prices on drinks are slightly cheaper for the area but I doubt you would notice a difference unless you spent a lot of time in the Merchant City, where a Magners and a pint can cost you a tenner (yes, I am looking at you Beer Café).
There are two reasons to go to Bacchus.
First the food — in a city where even high end restaurants will receive plated meals from 3663 at the loading bay and pass this off as «homemade», the Bacchus Homemade Steak burger was unique. A light packed mince with decent flavour and not the standard frozen patty from the Brothers Van.
Second — the service is excellent. Having suffered terrible service in the Merchant City and especially at these dark wood bars (a night out at the Lowdown with an hours wait for drinks comes to mind). The service was outstanding and friendly. If I lived closer this could become a local very easily. You could envisage the staff getting to know you and your drinking ways.
If you are near, I would check it out and make the trip from the Merch Strip to Glassford.

Got to admit to you, my fellow passengers aboard the good ship Unilocal,that the wee fourth star up there is purely for the soundtrack which accompanied our wee eve in this cool joint.
Mr Hayes of the Issac variety funked us along as our wee table of American/​Irish/​Canadian/​Scottish heritage discussed everything Glasgow, San Francisco and… Winnepeg…yeah…Winnipeg.
Any-​who, Bacchus wasn’t quite what i was expecting to find in the Merchant City. Missing was the overinflated prices, trendy city folk and aloof bar staff… she smiled and laughed… i know!!!
Aye so, not exactly my kinda joint, but well worth a wee visit f your in this neck of the woods. Also heard good things about the grub, but alas, last night was all about the beer!

Although not exactly one of my regular haunts, Bacchus holds a special place in my heart as it was used by the organisers of our course at university to stage a ‘Welcome Night Out’ sort of thing during our freshers week; a night I would make several new friends. Though I think it’s also because of this that every time I hear the name ‘Bacchus’ I think of my bald, beardy lecturer Ken for some reason. I try to erase the thought but, somehow, it will not go away!
Bacchus is a very modern, trendy, quiet place that contrasts much with the older, traditional places nearby like Rab Ha’s and the Steps Bar. There is good offers on food available, such as a 2-​course meal for £12.95 and I’ve noticed during the daytime many office worker types in for a spot of lunch. There is a good selection of drinks available including an unusual Japanese beer on tap. It is very pricey though — £3 for a bottle of Miller and £2.90 for a vodka and lemon/​lime for example.
The bar is open until 2am on a Friday or Saturday which is a welcome feature, not offered by a lot of city centre pubs. Bacchus also shows a good selection of live sport — as well as football I’ve seen tennis onscreen. For the football it is mostly popular with Celtic fans when their team is live on the telly, especially Old Firm matches.

Bacchus is a cracking little place to go for food and drinks if you’re ever in this end of town. It has a great, relaxed vibe that is created by the friendly staff and a good choice of chilled out music playing in the background.
The food is much more than your average pub grub, offering a great selection including pasta and fish dishes as well as tapas dishes including vegetable curry and houmous served with pitta bread.
The food is delicious and the drinks are not pricey at all. A great place for long lunching or an evening out.

Bacchus is brilliant. Whether you’re after food or drink, this place will cater to your every need.
It’s a lovely bar inside — smooth, classy and sleek, it doesn’t scream cheap and nasty, and it ain’t expensive at all. In fact, it’s perfectly priced — you pay for what you get, and that’s cold drinks, good food and ace service.
Named after the Greek god of wine and intoxication, you know it’s going to be good.

A great hidden gem, Bacchus Café Bar is tucked at the tip of Glassford Street.
Sleek and smooth, the bar is pleasing on the eye, and service is swift even when busy.
Food portions are generous and light on the pocket. Washed down with a few drinks from their draught selection, this place has to go down as a real find.

I went to Bacchus the other night with a group of friends in order to exploit their excellent 2-​for-​1 pizza offer. This offer runs from 5pm-​7pm every thursday night, with most pizzas averaging around £6.75 each (not including the 2-​for-​1 deal).
We ordered one of each pizza (there were 8 in total) and were told that they may not have enough dough — which was slightly disconcerting. In any case, the food started to arrive about 25 minutes after the order was placed, served by an extremely friendly waitress. The pizza’s were all extremely good, with the exception of one which contained sardines — which as you might expect was very fishy, and unfortunately no one in the group likes sardines!
All in all it was a very pleasant evening with good service and very good value for money. Definitely recommended for small groups of diners.

I was in Bacchus to watch a comedy show during the recent Merchant City Festival.
Nice small bar upstairs, with a good wee room downstairs for the show.