GastroPunx25 @TransEurope Cafe

Parnie Street, Glasgow (transeuropecafe.co.uk, 0141 552 7999)

POLICE everywhere. Cruising grimly up the Gallowgate, clattering menacingly overhead in their helicopter, searchlight poking down nearby. People watch silently. As we turn for the door someone nods towards the dead looking end of this street, Parnie Street.

Just yards away, deep in the shadows, uniforms. Lots of them, stamping, murmuring, waiting. Danger? There's certainly a frisson of it. We're dressed in dark clothing, haven't been to the Old Firm game, not even wearing football colours, so we probably fit alarmingly well into the police intelligence profile of football casuals. Uh-oh.

We slip quickly into the warmth, others coming hurriedly in behind, and squeeze into seats at one of the trestle tables, nodding quietly at the complete strangers beside us. In a while two police will be right in here. Talking to the owner, looking around, appearing friendly. Cunning that.

The plates that held octopus carpaccio, crayfish, cranberry and watermelon will by then be stacked away in the kitchen. The lovely light, texture of that octopus, the sharp hit of the cranberry merely a memory. We'll be trying to look innocent whilst dining on strange-looking dishes containing colourful shapes and swirls. If we're asked we'll be able to say these are in fact food. Dots of Italian sottacetti, blobs of distilled apple and radish. That's a crisp, crunchy straw of crackling, that's a tiny cube of cheek fried in breadcrumb.

And this? Here? This is a lush, rich pancetta-wrapped mouthful of soft, sweet, porky goodness that is the entirely acceptable face of the current cheffy fashion to take a whole pig's head, braise it, pull off the juicy bits and stuff them into an unrecognisable treat. Honest.

By the time we've eaten fat, juicy, seared and seasoned hunks of roast hake, dug into a white bean ragu that mashes under the lightest touch of the fork with cured raw sobrasada sausage - the second I've had in Glasgow in a week or so - the cops will have moved on. Phew.

Gastro Punx then? Even the name sounds dangerous, edgy doesn't it? If it's not illegal in Scotland yet, it surely will be. The idea is this. Hire a venue for the weekend, in this case the otherwise cosy, comfy Trans-Europe Cafe, stick secret messages on blogland, take email bookings, sit everyone at two long tables, cook. Though not necessarily in that order.

Anarchy on the restaurant scene? Maybe. Certainly a post-pop up way for a chef to test the waters, break in, with low overheads.

Tonight's cost is £40-a-head for seven courses. People chat, strong drink is taken, music plays reasonably loudly and the food flows. You're right, Street Food Collective has already done something similar in Glasgow on a huge scale, memorable mainly, as I may have previously mentioned, for its financial genius rather than any culinary fireworks.

We're in for a big shock though. Joe and I are eating a pressed free range chicken - a good idea but far too salty - when it turns out amazingly that the Irish guys we've been wary of all evening on the grounds they may be crackpot food subversives are actually the owners of Redmond's gastro pub in the east end of Glasgow.

Crikey. It then turns out that's not a bunch of dangerous crypto food casuals at the next table, but Mr and Mrs Brown from Brown's restaurant on south side at the next table.

Over a cube of reinvented Black Forest gateaux with an oh-wow cherry sorbet I'm forced to concede this evening isn't quite as edgy as I'd imagined.

Actually, the menu with it's petit fours of beetroot and bubblegum pastilles, chocolate and cumin fudge, salt caramel and peanut truffles isn't that edgy more fine dining.

When Shaun the chef comes out to talk to us all it seems the theme is not revolution, for the gastro-casuals but actually round-Europe-on-a-plate.

Never mind. It was very good. And we'll still get a buzz trying to sneak past the milling rozzers outside.

Octopus carpaccio, beetroot and bubblegum pastilles, braised pig's head. Fine dining but not as we know it. 5/5

It's a pop-up so there's a bit of drama, and not just outside. The cafe looked good on the night if the seating was a little tight. 4/5

Polite, comfortable, knowledgeable and friendly. OK, it's a one-off event but hard to fault. 5/5

You work it out. £40 for seven clever courses including melted Tunworth cheese, crackers and apple jelly to finish. Real value. 5/5

Octopus carpaccio and Black Forest dessert outstanding and pig's head prepared to the highest standard, but could be bolder. 8/10

27/30