Assam's, Glasgow - Restaurants in Glasgow | s1play.com

Mum's the word

Review published on 03/08/2009 © Sunday Herald

Picture this. I'm telling Marco all about Olivia and Carlo's wedding, a tinfoil parcel on the table before me issuing steam and delicious fishy curry smells. I'm lifting half the haddock fillet inside it over to Marco's plate while all the time going on about a guy called Roberto Enzo. Italian accordionist, fantastic singer. I'm just at the point where I'm recounting how my cousin Olivia - the new Mrs Crolla to you - had got it absolutely, totally right.

You know: great wedding, people dancing on the chairs throughout the meal, a conga line snaking past the table on the main course, Enzo crooning beautiful love songs over every dish, Italians shouting” bacci, bacci” at five-minute intervals so the couple would stop eating and kiss to huge and good-natured cheers. So I'm telling the story, and just as I slide the fork under the mushrooms and curry spices to taste the other half of the haddock fillet and - and bloody hell, where is the other half of the fillet? There isn't one. What's going on? Clearly the mushrooms have been artfully arranged to conceal the meagreness of the portion.

Are we back to wartime rationing? I think not. As a start it's not a good one. I'd be giving nul points, possibly less, were it not for the fact that as I'm hastily reclaiming bits of my haddock from Marco's plate I'm heaping his chunky haddock and green chilli pakora on to mine. Now, this is delicious. The fish is extraordinarily moist, the gram flour batter super-light, and there's an occasional little dink from the fresh chilli. Double bonus, unlike the tiny portion of haddock in the tinfoil parcel, delicious though its dark, fiery and moreish sauce is. Hmm.

One of the reasons we wandered in here tonight was not just to talk about weddings, new men though we undoubtedly are, but because Assam's has something of a buzz about it on account of the owner Asam Rashid having been general manager of the well-respected Mother India in Glasgow for quite some time. This restaurant is nicely decorated and the waiting staff are good-looking and not in the least bit useless. In fact, they're efficient and very smiley. Even the sub-street-level location, home to various hopeless Indian incarnations down the years, is looking sharp tonight. The truth is we went for the haddock and mushrooms in tinfoil because it's a Mother India signature dish, though this one has a slight twist, if not with the portion then with the mushrooms. Eyebrows that were raised on both sides of the table have gone back up again at the main courses, but this time for entirely the right reasons.

There's an absolutely perfect, creamily textured, nicely browned and lightly oiled nan bread, a saag paneer bursting with cubes of lightly browned cheese and surrounded by heaps of excellently spiced spinach, plus the showstopper of the evening: a lamb chop curry. When we ordered it, we expected tandooried neck chops - the cuts they sell by the ton in those excellent little Indian shops in Govanhill and which are starting to make their way on to mainstream menus. The reality is we have five large lamb chops on the bone suffused with ginger and black pepper and complemented by a light but rich sauce. Full points. Full points for all the main courses, actually. The only letdown is that bizarre haddock episode, which I'll count as an abberation, a blip to what looks like being an otherwise very good restaurant.