Joanna Blythman review: Islena, Glasgow

Food rating 6/10

IN March, sales at restaurants and bars in the US surpassed those at grocery stores. How long before the UK goes the same way? The other day I passed through a small town awash with ropey-looking takeaways, the only other apparent food option being a hulking Tesco. Is it any wonder that many people who live in such places lose the will to cook?

In the US, the investment firm Morgan Stanley identified "a younger cohort" more willing to spend on "food away from home". My impression here too is that for all but the most up-market establishments, it's a younger demographic that keeps them going. Reviews apart, I belong to an older cohort that restaurateurs must work harder to woo. I'm attracted to places serving up something that I couldn't, or wouldn't do myself at home, and I have the experienced home cook's meanness. Pay £8 for a tomato/goat cheese/balsamic/rocket assembly job salad? You must be joking!

So it's either got to be a place with professional chef skill that I lack, or properly ethnic, or it has special equipment (eg wood fired oven, a deep fryer, a charcoal grill), or some such selling point. Otherwise I can bore for Britain, along the lines of: "You could make this at home for a fraction of the price."

We didn't have a bad meal in Islena, the new Spanish outfit that has moved into the premises formerly occupied by Central Market, in Glasgow's Merchant City, but equally I don't feel a burning urge to return. The menu isn't very long, and the dishes aren't quite exciting enough. There are specials, although our server forgot to tell us about them. Descriptions, such as "baked aubergines", "seafood rice", are brief to the point of terseness. Economy of language in food description is always to be applauded, but the reality wasn't lighting me up either. And while there was nothing actively wrong with, for instance, our tuna tartare with avocado - the fish was fresh, the avocado ripe - it was a classic case of something I could do at home, and definitely with much more flair. Maybe it wasn't seasoned enough; and it was definitely too cold. I couldn't complain, but I couldn't enthuse either. Ditto the grilled sardines, cooked under the salamander. They were acceptably, if not vivaciously, fresh but otherwise so plain as to be, well, dull.

And there's a problem with the very concept of a Mediterranean restaurant in Scotland: we just don't have the sun-soaked produce to deliver the savour conjured up by that term. To make gazpacho, for instance, you need sweet, mild onions and peppers, ripe tomatoes, crunchy cucumber, and a lick of juicy, summer-fresh garlic. Lookalikes from northern European glasshouses won't produce the same pleasing result. Islena's honest attempt was felled by onions too pungent to eat raw, the inevitable watery veg, and olive oil that - yes, I can't stop myself complaining here - wasn't quite up to the job. Is it even worth making gazpacho here unless you grow your own veg? Cold soup in Scotland is always a hard sell at any time of year.

The dish described, relatively loquaciously, as "hake, clams, ham, sherry", was another "meh" offering. The fish moist, apparently unseasoned, soft-skinned, with a blob of thin, vinegary aioli that had the whiff of stored garlic, sat on a thin puddle of juice with just six clams, and tiny specks of ham in it. An empanada formed from Cranks-style pastry was stuffed with a chickpea and spinach mix of promising-undergraduate-learning-to-cook standard, and flanked by a pile of rocket that suggested a kitchen bereft of better ideas. £12 for this underwhelming vegetarian dish of neither pricey ingredients nor demanding cooking?

I'd be curious to know why Islena thinks it can justify £4 for a meagre amount of gritty rice pudding overpowered by vanilla. Moist almond and orange Santiago tart was a winner, but at £5, the portion needed to be scaled up by a third or a half.

Where's the spark here? And who's making the big decisions? For the moment, Islena feels rudderless.