60 Trongate, Glasgow 0141 548 1330 Style: Casual bar-bistro Food: Asian fusion tapas Price: Three tapas, £15 Wheelchair access: Yes What is it about Glasgow and vegetarians? While Edinburgh boasts a handful of veggie restaurants that are good enough to attract all but the most die-hard carnivore, its west-coast city rival still seems to regard a meat-free diet as an irritating fad for undernourished cranks.

For this reason, you take note when anywhere offers even more than a single vegetarian option - especially if they don't involve goat's cheese, that cliché of veggie sophistication. That's why the Gate stands out. It's not that it makes any claims to be vegetarian, just that by having nine meat-free choices on its tapas menu, not to mention almost as many again on the seafood list, it gives vegetarians the chance to feel like a normal part of the human race.

This would be great if it didn't feel like the Gate was suffering an identity crisis of its own. For a start, it has two names. The Gate is the name of the bar-lounge at the front of Trongate building, with its couches, cigarette machine and KT Tunstall on the stereo. The Secret Garden is the more formal restaurant towards the back, partially cordoned off by a wall, but really the same space. Technically, each has its own menu - the Gate offering pasta, sandwiches and burgers (including a handful of veggie options), the Secret Garden specialising in Asian fusion tapas - yet both menus are available irrespective of where you sit. I'd be surprised if many customers knew where they were.

In itself that's no bad thing - it's nice to have the choice, but it reflects a general confusion about what kind of place the Gate wants to be. The design is a mish-mash of styles in muted tones: a slate grey surface here, a wall inlaid with pebbles there. It tries to be elemental and sophisticated at the same time as brash and lively. The subtlety is the thing that gets drowned out.

Our choice was to eat from the Secret Garden's menu - the more interesting of the two - but the Gate's bar was a livelier option than the quiet lunchtime restaurant. The gang of young women having a celebratory drink round the low-level tables brought a bit of energy to the room, even if the flickering of the silent TV was a distraction (and it would've been if we'd just popped in for a pint of Kirin Ichiban Japanese lager).

The presentation of the food will be familiar to anyone who's tried Spanish tapas (two or three dishes per person plus rice should be plenty), the difference being that the flavours nod to Asia and the Pacific Rim. To my piquant side of lemongrass rice, I added three vegetable tapas: sweet potato bravas which were crisp chunks of vegetable offset by lemon mayonnaise; Indo spiced okra in a mild tomato sauce; and mushroom, chilli and soya, which despite the waitress's grim warnings was only gently spicy.

A committed carnivore, my partner chose pork saag in a rich spinach sauce, ginger fried chicken served with pickled ginger, and prawn tempura, the thick batter owing more to the Glasgow fish and chip shop than the delicacy of the east, although the prawns were surprisingly large. Like the vegetable dishes, they were good without being great, recommended for the variety and novelty of presentation more than any astonishing flavours.

We skipped pudding on the basis that they don't serve Eton mess, sticky toffee pudding and banoffee cheesecake in Thailand. It was a further reminder that this friendly and laidback restaurant is in two minds about what it wants to be.