Asiama, Glasgow

THE roasted ducks still hang in the little kitchen window alongside garishly pink char sui and, yes, there’s soft shelled crab on the menu. The pork belly in the three roast, we could have had four, is crisply skinned like only the Chinese do but where are the pots of free green tea?

Where are the Malaysian students who used to pack the place? The tables of Chinese families? And what’s happened to the prices?

Even worse it’s dead in here, just us, and the staff, and a manager under drab and dim lighting.

Large photographs of Paris now adorn the walls. Walls that have been moved to create one large room. It’s edgy but not in the way Asia Style used to be edgy when we jostled for seats and ate elbow to elbow while roasts and crisps and meats and fish flew from the kitchen, as flavours and textures, sweet or fiery, salty or sour popped and exploded in the occasionally smouldering mouth in what was undoubtedly, for a long time anyway, Glasgow’s best restaurant.

Not in the way Asia Style used to be with the always present feeling that there was a portal to a dangerous Oriental underworld just through that square kitchen window over there.

This new place, this Asia Style replacement called Asiama, is edgy tonight but simply in the sense that here a boss is watching the staff and they’re watching us. Grimly. Uncomfortably.

They’re also at the table all the time. Weighing drinks to see if they need refilled, taking the serving spoon out of the hand, every time it’s touched.

But when asked “What’s a Balajan-style sauce,” while looking at the dare-I-say-it tourist menu the reply is a disinterested: “It’s a sauce”. Hmm, yes.

Further probing is firmly resisted until I ask the manager guy. He can assist no further than to confirm it is indeed a sauce. Maybe, maybe not, made by fishermen. Though he does add that Asia Style dishes are all still available here. This we know because we have already ordered the very dish Asia Style was famous for: its soft shelled crab which was biscuit crisp, with sweet white meat, always cleanly served without even a whiff of the horrible gucky stuff that amateurs fail to clean from it.

In Asiama tonight they’ll charge you a minimum of £9 just to try what turns out to be a floppy, slightly soggy and rather poor copy. There’s a gourmet menu which is hugely repetitive and rather disappointingly mainstream.

We have to settle for something called Authentic-Malay Style Black Pepper Chicken. No, you’re right. This is not promisjng.

And to think on the way in we walked right past Ka-Ka-Lok with its hand-written specials menu promising scallops and seafood in all manner of exotica.

Anyway, Balajan-style, in here anyway, turns out to be no discernible style at all. Nor any discernible flavour. Maybe there’s a flash of ginger now and then amidst the stir fried kang-kung or water spinach but it’s so bland as to be nothing.

The crispy roast pork in it is, of course, not crispy at all by the time it has stewed and steamed in the vegetables but we’ll not hold that against them as the crispy pork in the three roasts was good.

That authentic-Malay black pepper chicken? Chunky peppers, very cheap looking and tasting chicken and yet again nothing whatsoever discernible in the flavours.

Hmmm. What’s going on here? It wouldn’t be right to blame a restaurant for not being the restaurant you used to like, even if it does seem to be passing itself off as something very similar. But the joy of Asia Style when it first opened was its complete disinterest in catering for western tastes, the sense of adventure whenever something new was tried on the menu, its cheery and helpful staff. Asiama is fully and blandly westernised. I’ll avoid.

Asiama

185 St George's Road, Glasgow (0141 332 8828)

Menu: Malaysian Chinese on the very spot where the great Asia Style once stood - similarities end there. Bland touristy style menu. 3/5

Atmosphere: Customers of Asia Style, which never had to rely on style, will notice walls have been knocked down, rooms enlarged. Doesn’t add anything. 3/5

Service: It was very quiet when we were in on a Saturday evening and the staff seemed unable to relax. 3/5

Prices: Minimum spend on soft shelled crab starter is £9, most dishes are around a tenner. They are large portions but sadly of pretty ordinary stuff. 3/5

Food: Somebody’s misguided idea of what people in Glasgow want to eat when it comes to Chinese Malaysian food. Dull, bland and hopelessly out of step with our adventurous palates. 5/10

TOTAL: 17/30