While I applaud the trend towards regionalism amongst Italian restaurateurs in Scotland it can’t be a halfhearted project. At Isola Sarda in Glasgow, which makes play of being Sardinian, there’s a feeling that the management is hedging its bets. New menus are overdue, I’m told. The one I’m handed has that flowery old trattoria typeface that customarily flags up banal all-thing-to-all-men food. It is sprinkled with distinctive Sardinian dishes and ingredients- a hint of bottarga (salted tuna roe), fregola (tiny pasta), crisp carasau bread- but this ship comes pre-burdened with a heavy cargo of dated Britalian offerings: prawns in Marie Rose sauce; penne with smoked salmon, brandy, cream; chicken breasts in multiple forms, including ‘stripe’ (sic).

So we’re hunting the Sardinian thimble, and we’re the first, and only (once two fleeting customers have left) people there apart from the staff. We’re put at the worst table, in front of the chiller with its salumi and cheese still wrapped in plastic, trapped by a garrulous waiter determined to engage us in conversation, punctuated by a chorus of: “Is everything fine with your dish?’ “Wonderful thanks!” I feel trapped into liking everything, for the sake of politeness, just to keep him happy. He tells us at least three times that he’s from Sorrento but the chef is Sardinian. He tells us he’s worked in many Glasgow Italian restaurants- this isn’t inspiring confidence in me. Unintentional, I’m sure, but we feel watched.

To be frank, the menu is boring and predictable in most respects, and because I don’t relish paying good money for something that I could make at home by opening a few bags or jars, we end up with house soup (minestrone), which, although humble, is a classic soup that gives you the measure of an establishment, and baby octopus cooked with garlic, wine, and tomato. The minestrone, with its rather too gloopy tomato bulk, passes muster for an elementary cooking level, but the poor, powdery bread and butter pats in foil don’t reflect well on this establishment’s buying standards. The bread wasn’t quite as bad toasted, served as a complimentary starter spread with mildly fishy bottarga pate, although we studiously avoided the clapped-out rocket. There’s enough filling octopus to make a main course but it’s an ordeal to eat, with the texture of firmly cooked liver, and meaty in a dull way, rather than fishy. Both the octopus and the soup share a mouth-filling tomato presence that’s too intense, like a ready-made tomato sauce from a jar. There’s an art to making a great tomato sauce, and Isola Sarda hasn’t mastered it.

Now down to Sardinian business proper. Culurgiones, said to be authentic Sardinian pasta filled with potatoes and cheese, are indistinguishable from over-boiled spinach and ricotta gnocchi. I’m not picking up potatoes at all, and what appears to be ricotta has lost all its emollient creaminess, and turned dry and joyless. The pasta dough is stolid, gummy, and slicked with more of that acidic, all-purpose tomato gloop. £13 for this sub-standard plate? Come off it. Now for the malloreddus, little ridged pasta shells typical of Sardinia. They’re overcooked too, with the same poor tomato stuff, this time with some sausage crumbled through it. Any half competent home cook could make this easy dish much better simply by following the recommended pasta cooking time. And I draw the line at Michael Bublé murdering 1950s songs famously rendered by Sinatra and Dean Martin. This praise-seeking place, its tired, forced Italian-ish-ness, is really beginning to bug me.

But there are desserts still. Seadas, said to be homemade puff pastry, although the authentic article is deep-fried semolina dough, yields leathery, elastic bands of cheese improved by the warm honey dripping over it. Panna cotta, with the texture of Velveeta cheese spread, is improved by plump ripe blackberries. We politely but firmly decline the dreaded Limoncello, a southern Italian drink that’s too close to lemon washing up liquid for comfort.

So we went looking for Sardinia, but we didn’t find it.

Isola Sarda, 96 Trongate, Glasgow 07729 412859

Lunch/Dinner £20-30

Food rating 4/10

Joanna Blythman is Guild of Food Writers Food Writer of the Year 2018