'Phylum Feast' @ Stravaigin

Stravaigin's vast these days. The space upstairs doubled when familiarity, along with walls and the hairdressers next door, was swept away a year or so ago. In truth, I probably preferred the smaller place. The new and lengthy bar's too inviting to the rolling mauls of bland clothed men who haunt west end nights but pack the bars and fill the tills. The old place put them off. It's heaving, cluttered, tiny bar forced them to press up close to flamboyant types and question whether urges that they hoped had gone away, still lay, beneath their tightly fastened hose.

The downstairs restaurant was refurbished too, but it's so darkly lit you'd need a torch to see what's changed. We went on Thursday for 'The Phylum Feast'- a celebration of Darwin's birthday- and had a cracking night. I'll list everything:

First up was an aperitif, Monkey Gland Martini. Very tasty and fortunately no sign of the glands. Maybe some cheeky bar monkey dipped them in and out again before serving. Next came Primordial Soup and a glass of cava. Lovely. Nice cava too. Being pernickety I'd say the chicken stock was a bit intense for balance, but hey, best named dish of the year so far.

After that came mollusc salad- clams, scallop, squid, baby octopus, prawn, mussel- with a glass of Muscadet. Perfect combination.

Main was mutton with panko crusted langoustine. The flash didn't do this dish any favours, illuminated it wasn't the most visually appetising of dishes, but it tasted great. Flavourful, perfectly cooked mutton, again making me wonder why anyone bothers eating lamb and the panko (Japanese breadcrumbs) crusted Scottish langoustines were immense.

Biting through a gentle crunch to a just cooked, sweet, sea fresh prawn, is about as good a eating gets for me. This dish came with a glass of a Bordeaux good enough to make us order a bottle.

By the time desert arrived I was so high on life I can't even remember eating it. Coffee followed.

All of this, everything that is, except the extra bottle of red, came to £32. We sat down at 7.30 and left the table after 11. I think, frankly it was all getting a little hazy by then. All the drinks were proper sized glasses. That's truly remarkable value for money. This night came out from the jaded sea of Glasgow's eateries and will hopefully spawn a host of offspring. If it does, be sure to book your place aboard the evolution revolution.

CLICK HERE FOR STRAVAIGIN'S HOMEPAGE

Beauty When You Least Expect It

Had to pop to Linwood near Paisley today to meet someone for work. Nearly missed the place. The St James Centre 'Managed Offices' is barely signed and just off a roundabout amidst a sea of bland industrial erections. As we parked up I started to pay attention. The building we were visiting seemed different. Easy to pass but once noticed it starts to suck you in. It really reminded me of my Dad's old offices in Cwmbran... Lucas Girling... manufacturers of brakes for lorries and, far more excitingly to a six year old boy, Formula One racing.

The similarity was uncanny. More so as we went through the doors.

60s architecture done properly. Fabulous quality materials displaying a real old fashioned sense of a future led by industry and innovation.

My enthusiasm prompted someone to introduce me to John with the words, "He owns the building".

John explained it was built by the Rootes Group, motor manufacturers, and their main base was Birmingham, just like Lucas, so it wasn't impossible that the same architects had been employed at Cwmbran and Linwood.

So this place had been Rootes then later, after a buy-out, Chrysler Europe's HQ and to the front and back stretched the factories that once built the Hillman Imp. The foyer had been the showroom for a time. John's pictured here with a photograph showing the building, the thin strip in the middle, and the factories. They're all gone now.

John bought the building after selling a brick manufacturing business near Swansea. He wasn't sure that sale had left quite enough to retire on. What a brilliantly aesthetic pension plan!

Fantastic Bargain @ The Ivy (Glasgow)

There are many good reasons to go to The Ivy in Finnieston... staff who appear to be enjoying working there, great cocktails, decent wines by the glass, 100 rums and now this...

From Monday to Thursday you'll get two of these damn fine burgers with skinny fries for the price of one until 9pm. Great news for couples and greedy people. That makes this dish £4.25, well £5.25 after splashing out on three onion rings.

For vegetarians falafel fritters are included in the deal. I ate them just before Christmas and they're as good a falafel as I've had in Glasgow.

Remarkable value.

CLICK HERE FOR THE IVY'S WEBSITE

Matching Wine and Food - exciting discovery

There are the famous matches like bone dry Chablis with oysters, the surprises, like rich sweet Sauternes with Roquefort cheese and then there are the utterly unexpected...

The combination of Carr's, a particularly tasty sweet chilli sauce and this Beaujolais worked brilliantly. After a bite of chilli topped cracker the wine comes alive. Remarkable. Be warned, you'll demolish the lot in no time at all.

Por Kwan Sweet Chilli Sauce, £2.99 in Sainsbury's (seriously good on just about anything)

Beaujolais, Cuvee des Vignerons, £5 in Waitrose (on offer)

Carr's Large 'Table Water', widely available

A Delicious Tomato Risotto

In my teens I became hooked on cheese toasties. For months I'd eat nothing else. Then one night, without warning, the rush was gone, vanished without trace. I wouldn't give up without a fight though and started experimenting with the addition of 'exotics'.

Sometimes it worked... black pepper, sometimes it really didn't... cloves. One night, from the back of my parents spice cupboard, where every spice is still out of date, I pulled a jar of dried basil. Wow, what a revelation.

This combination so impressed my juvenile palette, I risked introducing it to my first proper-ish girlfriend. She was smitten. Not on me though. Months later I found myself opposite her new boyfriend in a bar, above the general hullabaloo all I could hear was, "Cheese toasties... bla bla...basil... bla bla... amazing". A silent rage began to swell, luckily I was just sober enough to hold back shouting across, "That's my recipe you bastard!".

Nowadays I know it's not really a surprise these ingredients mix so well. Pesto after all is mostly cheese and basil. Of course what basil's really famous for going with is tomato, so here's a dish other than pizza that sees them work so well together.

Tomato Risotto

Aside from butter, olive oil and hot stock, this is all you'll need.

The two cheeses are Parmesan and Tomme de Savoie. The tomato sauce is made by liquidising a tin of tomatoes then pushing them through a sieve with the back of a spoon. It's an adaptation of a recipe from the book 'Dear Franscesca' by Mary Contini. Follow the usual risotto recipe: like this one here , but omit the pancetta: and add the tomato sauce just after the white wine but before you start adding the hot stock. I used a low salt vegetable stock cube and it worked a treat.

Both cheeses go in at the end, let them melt then pop in the shredded basil. The original recipe used Fontina cheese but when I asked for some in Mellis's great cheese shop they told me they hadn't stocked it since 2000 !! The guy behind the counter explained it was because while it tastes great eaten in situ in the Valle d'Aosta they hadn't found one that travelled well. Strewth, a cheese that makes you come to it. How demanding. Instead he recommended Tomme de Savoie which worked perfectly, lots of melted, stringy cheesy goodness.

Tomatoes are a notoriously difficult wine match. But in this dish the tomato flavour is tempered by the cheese and basil and this wine worked well. It's on offer just now and an absolute steal for the rather odd price of £5.24. Full of delicious pink grapefruit flavours.

Forte Alto Pinot Grigio, Dolomiti, 2010. Down from £7.99 to £5.24 in Waitrose. What a bargain.

The Calm Before the Storm

The night before Hurricane Bawbag I was invited along to the Inverarity Vaults annual wine tasting. Set in the clubbable splendour of The Glasgow Art Club. After snuffling about a bit, my friend the artist Omar Zingaro Bhatia announced that 'ladies' had only been permitted since 1983. That explained why 'gentlemen' had the use of a vast, beautiful cloakroom within pissing distance of everywhere, whilst the ladies had to hitch up their skirts and hike upstairs. What a refreshing change. Not only that, but urinals manufactured by Adam Ant. How cool is that.

There were 140 wines to taste and a lot of top notch whisky. In a rare moment of focus I scanned the list and quickly identified all the wines that interested me. There were some lovely bottles, far too many to list, but my favourite wine of the night came from the last table I made it to. Just after trying the Mas de Daumas blanc (no nose, interesting flavour), I noticed a Crozes Hermitage blanc. What a cracker. Inverarity's Mike Cottam who was manning the table seemed pleased. Turns out he made the decision to buy this wine after tasting it during a visit to the Domaine.

Lovely honeysuckle and almond bouquet, beautiful palate with an oily texture balanced by acidity and delicious mineral flavours. An absolutely delicious wine so good on it's own, you'll need two bottles if there's going to be any left for dinner. Etienne Barret Crozes Hermitage Blanc is a real bargain at £12.99.

If you live in Glasgow and haven't yet been to Inverarity Vaults 'One on One' shop then go soon. In a city deprived of decent independent wine shops this place is a gem. It's also one of the best places to buy properly stored cigars.

Inverarity One to One

185a Bath Street (it's a basement door)

Glasgow

G2 4HU

0141 221 5121

CLICK HERE FOR THEIR WEBSITE

And here's the now legendary Hurricane Bawbag "OMG Trampoline" footage:

Montgravet - tremendous value

Quite definitely the best value red wine I've drunk all year. Not complex, just light, lovely blackcurrant and plum fruit flavours with a deliciously refreshing acidity that makes it shockingly moreish. Best of all, it costs just £4.99 in Waitrose. What a bargain.

Asian Gourmet - a dreamy restaurant.

We were headed down West Princess Street to Asia Style on St Georges Road. It was Thursday, dark, damp and early. We'd skipped lunch. Almost there, stomachs rumbling, sensing some sort of atmosphere, we stopped, turned and stared down through a steamed up basement window. Inside were tables filled with Chinese people, all laughing, slurping, and passing pots filled with diabolical looking wonders. We fell down the stairs and through the front door.

Normally at this point I wake up. Luckily, this time I didn't. There was one table free. Within seconds of sitting a plate of delicately salted daikon dressed with chilli and vinegar arrived. Then an enormous pot of green tea. The menu was massive. The daikon was delicious and scoffed in minutes. Another plateful arrived.

From the massive menu came Shredded Pork in Peking Sauce with Pancake and from the Chef's Specials supplement Monkish with Spring Onion and Ginger. The Shredded Pork was ok. The Monkfish was superb and without doubt the biggest portion of monkfish I've ever been served. All this plus a mound of steamed rice came to £20. Remarkable.

The decor's best described as functional. Intensely bright lighting, paper tablecloths and after thought wall hangings. But the food's good. The daikon dish, which was free, was worth the trip alone. Really. The portions are huge, so you'd get the best out of the place by going in a bigger group and sharing. Over the next few weeks I plan to do just that and try the following...

crab and pumpkin soup £12

white clam and tofu soup £10

deep fried pumpkin coated with salted egg yolk £8

jellyfish with shredded cucumber in garlic sauce £7

salt and chilli crab £10

hot and spicy frogs legs £9.50

steamed tofu with king prawn in salted egg yolk £8.50

fried jade Japanese tofu with spinach £8.50

deep fried sea bass with leeks £11

Some other 'interesting' dishes on the menu...

braised pork trotters £6.50

stir fry pork head meat with green pepper £6.50

marinated honeycomb tripes £6

fried fish head with tofu and vermicelli £9

quick fried pork intestines in brown sauce £8

shredded pig ear and cucumber in garlic sauce £7

We headed off to Chinaskis for a digestive rum and passed Asia Style on the way. Completely empty. The staff stared back at us, somehow they knew.

Asian Gourmet

17 West Princes Street

Glasgow

G4 9BS

They do takeaway too, and the more usual Chinese restaurant fayre.

0141 332 1639

07588 598 862

Open 7 days a week 5pm - 3am.

Confessional... and a tasty tart.

I've been a bit bored of food of late. That might not sound like much, but for someone whose life has more or less evolved around the stuff, it's quite an admission. Even evenings spent flicking through my favourite food porn failed to reignite the flame and I'd find myself heading straight for articles by Paul Krugman on the New York Times website, poor old 'Dining and Wine' didn't get a click in.

Well, I'm happy to say this fug is lifting. Yesterday, for the first time in ages, I found myself browsing blogs for a spot of inspiration, mainly those with Eastern Mediterranean leanings. I decided on a 'sort of tart sort of thing'.

Simple ingredients and couldn't be easier to make.

Roll out the shop bought, all butter (ideally), puff pastry and slightly push the goat's cheese and figs into it. Sprinkle with red onion and a generous amount of flaky sea-salt. Add the toasted pine nuts after cooking. Into a 220c/200c fan for about 20 minutes.

Oh it tasted good. Next time I'm going to double the quantity of goats cheese, it just needed a bit more tang to balance the figs. And, if two mini ice ages hadn't finished off my rosemary bush, there'd have been a spring of that on top too.

The white wine was a recommendation from Ross @ Woodlands Road Oddbins. It's a Galician wine with an unusual grape mix. The exotic floral nature of the 'Torrontes' grape helped make this a pretty successful match. Drinks very well on it's own too. Well worth £8.

For Those Who Are About To Rock... Wau Salute You!

Wau Cafe's just across the road from Kelvingrove Museum, along that strange little strip of Old Dumbarton Road. It's a Malaysian place with an interesting looking menu, kitsch interior and very friendly owners. Popped in for a bite to eat before heading off to the museum's AC/DC exhibition.

Prawn fritters to start. Cucur Udang? Odd but tasty and a very generous portion. They had a cake like texture with little flecks of dried shrimp throughout. Udang and Sotang Sambal's for mains (prawn and squid).

Both were really good although the squid tasted preserved rather than fresh, it reminded me of those little tins of 'squid in their own ink' you find in supermarkets.

Very nice none the less and the Nasi Goreng accompaniment was exceptional.

Sides were peanuts with tiny little fish and a bowl of chicken stock... I've no idea why, but it mixed nicely with the rice. The fish packed a taste punch well beyond their stature.

They spoke the truth, you wouldn't want to be in a rush. Luckily we weren't and the prices are remarkably cheap. There's no alcohol, instead some very tasty soft drinks like rose petal spritzer. As I sipped it through a straw, Bon Scott turned in his grave.

Kelvingrove Museum's AC/DC exhibition's well worth the £2 entrance fee for Bon Scott's letters alone. They also have some footage of an extraordinary performance at Glasgow's Apollo from 1977. Unfortunately there's also quite a lot of stuff from after Bon Scott's death... when, as far as I'm concerned, AC/DC died too.

Wau Cafe have a Facebook page with the menu and photos. It's well worth a visit, as is the place itself. CLICK HERE.

To A God Unknown

A few years ago, making my way through old archive tapes, I came across a fragment of an interview between a journalist and a former Moderator of the Church of Scotland recorded 20 years before.

It's not the sort of thing that normally grabs my attention but I recognised the journalist's name. All that was saved was the very end of the interview.

Journalist: "What do you think happens when you die?"

Former Moderator: "I've given a great deal of thought to that question over the years. Eventually I decided that it probably boils down to nothing more than the moment just before death. In that instant you either feel great joy or tremendous regret."

Journalist: "And that's it?"

Former Moderator: "That's it, there is nothing else".

I'd recognised the journalist's name because he'd died suddenly a few weeks before.

Billiant Beaujolais

Every now and again along comes a wine that's what wine's all about. Wine for which there's never a good enough reason not to open another bottle. This is such a wine.

It's a screaming Roman orgy of fruity lushness and on offer in Waitrose for £6.99. I've 'sipped' a third of a bottle writing this far {*} and I'm cursing myself for not buying more.

Pour into a goldfish bowl size glass, or a goldfish bowl, and inhale intoxicating perfume as sweet red velvety fruit caresses the palette. Togas optional.

Louis Jadot Beaujolais-Villages 2009: On offer just now: Waitrose £6.99