Osteria del Tempo Perso

17 John Street, Glasgow

0141 552 6009

Lunch £5-32 Dinner £20-32

Food rating 6/10

THERE is often a gulf between the promises of improvement dangled by property developers and the finished reality, but time is the ultimate judge. Back in the day, I seem to remember that Glasgow's Italian Centre, billed as a "mini Milan', was to be an instrument of regeneration by designer retail. Elite emporia (Versace, Armani) would reanimate the Merchant City, and embourgoisement by catwalk clutch bag would surely follow. Did it? To my mind Glasgow's very own dolce vita dream more resembles a ghost town, with its vacant outlets, tumbleweed courtyard, and curious lifelessness.

Mirroring the retail experience, several restaurants have set up in this over-hyped spot only to scarper as soon as their lease allowed. The latest brave enough to set up here is Osteria del Tempo Perso. With a parent restaurant in Lazio, and a sibling in Edinburgh, it has formed a partnership with the naffly named Tony Macaroni chain, moving into its former premises next to yet another Italian outfit, Alla Piazza. On a Saturday lunchtime it was apparent, if not entirely surprising, that supply in the area surrounding the centre outstripped demand. At Osteria del Tempo Perso, diners came perilously close to being outnumbered by front-of-house staff and managers, and yet the menu was ambitiously long and extensive. It has a fabulous wine list that covers all wine regions, and includes more unusual grape varieties, such as Grignolino and Freisa. Its low mark-ups will definitely provide happy hunting grounds for Italian wine lovers, and this liquid offering can hang around for a bit. But where Osteria hopes to find the uptake and turnover to sustain its comprehensive food offer isn't clear. If ever there was a candidate for a stripped down daily menu, this is it.

A brimming soup bowl of pasta e fagioli lived up to its peasant reputation, a liquid stew of beans, potato, rough-cut egg pasta in broth lightly flavoured with pancetta and thyme. Topped with bread croutons - carbs times four if you're keeping a count - it made an authentic rib-sticker. With a dusting of parmesan and frequent dollops of extra virgin olive oil, it constituted a satisfying meal in itself. Aubergine parmigiana put in an equally steadfast appearance, even if it wasn't a shining example of this dish. The cooking standard, and indeed the thinking behind it, nosedived with the pomodori stracolmi appeared, described as "vine tomatoes filled with a mix of eggs, Parmesan, and spices". This was a new dish to me, and probably, given Scotland's reliance on hard imported tomatoes, better not attempted. The tomatoes - hard, cold, furry-textured, vapid - instantly chilled the tepid, bland filling. Not a joyous way to spend £5.50.

But I could feel the disappointment triggered by this ill-conceived dish ebbing away when the chitarrine cacio e pepe arrived, testament to the kitchen's pasta making expertise, the guitar string-inspired noodles golden yellow, bouncy in the mouth, and glowing in their classic sauce of Pecorino Romana cheese and black pepper. Done properly, as this was, this dish makes macaroni cheese seem stodgy, and carbonara seem sloppy. This pasta cacio e pepe was the very essence of elegant simplicity, but a Carnaroli rice risotto with bosky, fresh-tasting porcini and porky crumpled sausage meat was wrong-footed by its extreme saltiness.

Was I feeling more for or against Osteria del Tempo Perso? Desserts were a clincher, confirming the kitchen's scary lapses in judgement. "Crostata di crema e Amaretto" turned out to be sad, flat, sticky agglomeration of soggy pastry and lumpy, rubbery custard with amaretti biscuits marooned in it. They tasted like wet brown bread crusts. For the record: stick to dunking amaretti in booze. As for the "new" cheesecake, the only novel thing about this anodyne confection was that it was muffin-shaped under a very thick crushed biscuit shell. Teamed up with sickly white ice cream of indeterminate character, you could not have asked for anything more nondescript.

Some conceptual clearing out might be just what Osteria del Tempo Perso needs, focusing on what it can do well, and jettisoning what it can't.