Nur, Glasgow - Restaurants in Glasgow | s1play.com

Mezze moments? Giza break

Review published on 07/01/2010 © Sunday Herald

Egyptian? I never fail to be impressed by how brave people are – or how daft. Take this restaurant, for example. On the wrong side of the river. At the end of a traffic-chute spitting crazed foot-to-the-floor drivers into the crawling jams that blight the south side of Glasgow. In a block that looks like it’s been cut in half by a giant knife.

And yet. Chopped off or not, it’s a lovely building: a survivor from the golden days of the city, when people walked and Bridge Street thrived. It’s all Ionic pillars, carved busts, arched windows – and, halfway up one outside wall, placed there quite recently, a butterfly, of all things. Look for yourself. Is it a very tall child’s prank? Or a sign of hope?

To step inside Nur, then, is to appreciate that someone has taken great care fitting this place out. There’s a high, billowing, tented ceiling; a mezzanine floor, its platform studded with the busts of Pharoahs; low seats; scatter cushions everywhere; and a deep, dark, chocolate-brown motif tying it all together. It’s not designer, although it is designed. By a woman, I’d say.

Tonight, an early Saturday evening, the tables are largely filled with families, children munching dry – very dry – Egyptian flatbread, their parents talking to the staff in that way people do when they know the owners and have come in to try out and support their friends’ new venture. If it wasn’t for the completely demented Egyptian music blaring from the speakers, it would be a calming scene.

What about the food, then? Er. I can let you into a secret and tell you I order all the wrong mezze dishes. And I can let you into another one and tell you that when the molokheya sauce arrives, at £2.45, neither I nor a Scottish waitress have the faintest idea what it is. This may be because I have – in a moment of stupidity, perhaps – completely forgotten an earlier conversation with another waitress, along the lines of:

“Who pays £2.45 for a dish of sauce?”

“It’s made from a plant grown on the Nile and is worth every penny, sir.”

Or could it be because, when the sauce arrives, in a very deep bowl, it looks and tastes like a type of thick spinach and garlic soup? Either way, I should have poured it over my delicious buttery rice and not assumed the serving spoon was a soup spoon and eaten the whole lot in one go. Oops. Still, was it good? Yeah, it was. What can I say? I was eating on my own and so busy trying to get a feel for the place that I wasn’t paying attention to the food. Anyway the sauce/soup was better than the mezzes, though not as good as the lamb and okra tagine, all sticky and thick with melting chunks of very tender meat throughout it. Excellent.

Those mezzes? I’ve been keeping them till last because, of all the dishes in this meal, they have been the most disappointing. Disappointment number one? No sign on the menu of what is the best salad in the Middle East, tabbouleh. Number two: the portions are far too small, even at £9.95 for four dishes. Number three: the kofta meatballs are tough and dry. Number four: the first portion of Egyptian flatbread is dry, not warm and has the texture and taste of a slightly stale beermat.

I should have ordered the falalfel, the Egyptian version made from fava beans. On that note, it would also have been smart to have picked the foul – pronounced fool – which is fava beans in garlic, an Egyptian signature dish. And I should have avoided the salads: the cucumber and lime was pleasant, but far too small. At least the wara’ enab – or dolmades as they’re known in other parts of the Mediterranean – were delicious and packed full of rice and minced lamb.

Nur, then? Authentically Egyptian, pleasantly decorated, interesting food … and something a little bit different in these jaded times. These are early days. A bit of a shake-up of the mezze menu, a re-jigging of the prices and portions and they could well be on to something.