The Grassroots Cafe, Glasgow - Restaurants in Glasgow | s1play.com

Livin' on the veg

Review published on 05/06/2006 © Sunday Herald

In my line of work, it’s all too easy to end up eating meat or fish almost automatically, usually because the veggie option is so unimaginative, overpriced and unappealing.

A recent vegetarian home-cooked meal put me in a mood for more in the same vein. However, my dining partner, a militant vegetarian when we first met, is now a born-again, evangelical meat-eater of the most voracious kind. “Do we have to go to Grassroots?” he grumbled, referring to the long-established Glasgow temple to meat-free fare.

Once there, he proceeded to complain, sotto voce, that if omnivore restaurants offer a veggie option, then veggie restaurants should offer a meat option. A few sharp kicks under the table put an end to that nonsense. And anyway, as I pointed out, this was a menu with a vast and eclectic choice of dishes, not all of which involved tofu, lentils or seaweed.

With some sweet talking, I managed to convince him to go for Italianate aubergine parmigiana followed by a Moroccan tagine, while I chose a modern British spinach and beet salad and a Mexican burrito.

I began to lose my PR campaign for the delights of vegetarianism with the aubergine, a plodding British rendition of the classic dish. To make it work, you need to have the right sort of aubergines, patiently softened with foreign flair in profligate amounts of oil. These aubergines still offered squeaky resistance in the mouth and the tomato sauce they were layered with was weirdly sweet. They were topped with a rubbery mozzarella and dry breadcrumbs – an unwelcome Brit addition.

I, however, was liking my roasted beetroot and baby spinach salad with warm fried potatoes, even if it wasn’t exactly thrilling.

There were further mutinous murmurings from the other side of the table when the artichoke tagine turned up. Tagines are necessarily sweet because they contain dried fruits, but this one was toothsome to a fault.

The artichokes themselves had a tinny, acidic character, as though they had been stored in brine, and no particular flavour. Along with root veg, dried fruits and pistachios, they were mixed in with a tomato sauce, tasting pretty much like the one in the aubergine dish, except it had lots of cumin. The tagine sank into the accompanying couscous to produce an inelegant, stodgy mush.

My burrito was better; a soft, moist tortilla filled with kidney beans, avocado and mature, flavoursome cheese. There was another splodge of the universal tomato sauce on top, along with a blob of sour cream and hot green chillis which, rather disappointingly, were not the chipotle chillis listed on the menu that had initially attracted me. Chipotles are smoked jalapenos and these chillis were not smoked.

You can usually rely on veggie establishments to make a good job of puddings, so at first I couldn’t decide why the banana and pecan loaf (hardly an exacting item to bake) was so dull to eat. Then I realised it didn’t taste as though it contained any bananas. What’s more, it was so arid, it really needed a cup of tea to wash it down. I asked for Darjeeling. They had no Darjeeling. What about green tea then? The only green tea came with aloe vera, best kept for toiletries.

My companion, meanwhile, was desperately trying to enjoy a friable chocolate sponge with a truly ghastly icing that tasted as though it had been made with margarine, a substance, vegetarian, vegan or otherwise, that I consider beyond the pale. He just wasn’t convinced the whole veggie project had a lot to offer these days, but then he never would be. Any suggestions for restaurants that might win him over?

© Sunday Herald