Ka Pao At Acid Bar, SWG3, Glasgow. Restaurant review by Ron Mackenna

LET’S GIVE you an idea of where we are eating tonight. Booking is available seemingly exclusively via the internet, the menu is a pencil-tick order form while the decor is largely snow-blind white meets bland ash veneer. At least two of the above may be familiar to you if you have ever been in Ikea. The word pop-up is mentioned in blurbs somewhere and the food is being served in a bar which is itself in one of those on-trend, multi-purpose semi loft-type buildings at the end of a Glasgow cul-de-sac. Nearby dual carriageway zinging by atmospherically.

So the cutting edge is where we are at then. And the flavours, if not the food itself, being from suddenly-exploding-everywhere South East Asia, is the cutting edge of the cutting edge.

Staff speak reverentially of messy prawns; crinkle eyes knowingly when monkfish with coconut is mentioned and even conspiratorially reveal that those prawn shells will be slit and that vein removed before it gets anywhere near a table. Though we will not be actually sitting at a table. Ignoring the question of whether the unnecessary prawn vein removal hoo-ha was started by Michelin or Masterchef, you may wonder if Ka Pao is quite as cool as it seems to think it is.

There’s certainly a bit of an awkward reaction when we walk in and it emerges that I have somehow, idiotically I’ll admit, internet booked for two of us instead of three. Though I did phone and nobody phoned back. A long uncomfortable (for us) huddle follows while the issue is whisperingly discussed. Plenty of free table space in here, I reassure everyone. They’ll surely squeeze in an extra one?

Uh-oh, finally we’re told that we’ll have to eat perched up at the bar. Of course there are – and will remain throughout our meal – way more than enough empty seats at the bench tables to cater for a single unbooked-by-an-idiot person. Sigh. Modern life.

What about the food then? OK, there are lots of those little taster platey things, which turn out to be a bit awkward to share between three, especially along a bar, and sauces go a-dripping, coconut a-scattering, all over white veneers and shirt fronts but the flavours? Full-on, face-slappingly attention-grabbing.

We start with plump sweet padron peppers in sticky tamarind, garlic and fish sauce. A cucumber and peanut salad is then so vibrantly and freshly flavoured with that prik nam pla that I order another as soon as it’s finished. Corn ribs gets the prize for the most creative use of a single corn cob. It being sliced into thin wedges, grilled, doused throughout in tangy fish sauce and sprinkling all over with calming coconut. “Eat them from this side,” says the waiter. Good advice because the other side is corn cob heart. They’re excellent though.

There’s a sea trout curry with coconut and finger roots that’s sweet and sour and deliciously savoury while the fish itself is pert and plump.

Those much trumpeted messy prawns come in the shells and are so slathered in chilli and spices, palm sugar and sour tamarind that they alone powerfully paralyse the tastebuds for a few seconds. In a good way. Finger bowls and napkins needed. Ka Pao on the plate turns out to be ka-pow on the palate.

Some people may find this relentless parade of shouty, salty, sweet, sour flavours a bit overwhelmingly overblown on occasion. And I definitely think the service is a bit too by-the-internet numbers.

Also, the food comes firing out when it suits the kitchen. Which is a bit disjointed, but who doesn’t do that these days? It’s certainly quick. We are in and out in pretty much less than an hour, though with all that cold modern decor and noise bouncing off every hard surface it’s white-noisearama.

Overall, though, the kitchen is punching well above the venue’s weight.

Ka Pao At Acid Bar, SWG3,

100 Eastvale Place

Glasgow

07984013648

Menu: Messy prawns with tamarind and palm sugar, corn ribs with salted coconut. It certainly sounds appetising. 5/5

Service: Enthusiastic but we were sent to the bar due to a minor booking blunder, despite there being free seats throughout the meal. 2/5

Atmosphere: Whatever Acid Bar means it’s super white, long tabled, with a view of the car park and quite a lot of background noise. Fashionable. 4/5

Price: Cucumber salad was £4.50, padron peppers £3, while messy prawns are £8 and curries £8.50. Reasonable, but it mounts up. 4/5

Food: More ka-pow than Ka Pao. Big flavours, make that huge South East Asian flavours. Cucumber salad and padron peppers worth a whirl, messy prawns too. 8/10

23/30