The Left Bank, Glasgow - Restaurants in Glasgow | s1play.com

You can bank on it

Review published on 14/08/2006 © Sunday Herald

The newish Left Bank café-bar/kitchen in Glasgow’s Gibson Street is one of those rare eating places that ticks every possible box. Food? Double ticks here. Decor? Amusingly pretty butterfly lighting. Beautiful wallpaper from the stylish Timorous Beasties design emporium. Another tick for original style. Ambiance? A buzzy pub but not oppressively rowdy. More ticks. Service? You get new glasses halfway through a meal and water topped up even before you notice that it’s running low. Further ticks. Value? A cluster of ticks here. Every main course would serve two, and with food this appealing you won’t be complaining about being super-sized. But the most amazing thing about the Left Bank is the prices, which are roughly half to two-thirds of what similar dishes might command elsewhere, even if they weren’t nearly as good. Its wines are charitably priced too. No wonder it has got off to a flyer.

The Left Bank is the very antithesis of those bars where the food is a mere addendum to the booze. It appears to be run by a partnership of real people who actually know about restaurants, not the more common line-up of property speculators and would-be tycoons who haven’t a clue about food and are just looking for a nice little earner. The head chef – hurrah! – is a woman, Liz McGougan. She has a very strong second chef in Adam Barnes. Both have an impressive curriculum vitae of restaurant experience under their belts, seasoned with culinary ideas gained from foreign travel.

The cooking at The Left Bank is bold and spicy. Some dishes do plough a more European or Western furrow, but the condiments and seasonings of south-east Asia and the Indian sub-continent are never far away. Unusually, given that it is white Westerners who are cooking rather than natives, the kitchen uses potent flavours confidently and with great accomplishment.

This is why I just had to have the garlic fried masala seafood with coconut and squash Malabar curry. Its aromas wafted over from the next table, and I was hooked. It was a brilliant dish loaded with nuggets of prime white fish, squid, mussels and prawns in a rich south Indian sauce thickened with the squash and coconut milk. It came with fragrant rice dotted with mustard seed and a sensational fresh pickle of green mango and crunchy ‘chips’ of dried fish – a speciality of the Maldives. All this for £8.95 !

More flair with spice showed up in a mountainous starter of fleshy mussels cooked in rasam, the hot/sour tomato and tamarind broth of south India, this one exuding the earthy pungency of fresh curry leaves. A Thai-inspired salad of tender baby squid, anointed with lime juice, sesame oil, fish sauce and fresh chilli was beyond reproach.

Even choosing the more pedestrian, less globetrotting dishes, the cooking was far from plodding. The Left Bank burger made with Scotch beef was clearly so packed with lean steak mince that it was almost too bouncy and firm in the mouth. But it had a sound flavour and everything else on the plate was worth having; slices of crunchy dill pickle, more of the excellent chipotle aioli, a fiery, agreeably medicinal green peppercorn sauce. I arrived a few days too late to try the gooseberry and elderflower fool that I had spotted on the menu. But we plumped for the peach melba mousse, in truth, more of a layered construction of cream, raspberries, peach and runny honey than a mousse, but quite likeable. A warm, crumbly chocolate and raspberry brownie with vanilla ice cream disappeared in a flash.

I want to go back to The Left Bank. I hear its ‘super salad’ is fantastic too. Can’t wait to try it.