This restaurant is fun with a capital F

At first? I’m getting Ikea, and quite a lot of it. In these smart wooden booths, stretching to the horizon, filling this surprisingly large room; in the crisp white walls, the general cleanliness.

Even in the freshness of the vegetables, that magazine-perfect bouncy bok-choi for example, exactly the right number of water droplets clinging to it to make it seem just-washed as it shakes its pretty head on being lifted. That absolutely enormous pile of bunched coriander too, more than enough for Sainsbury’s to make a small fortune.

I’m saying all this to Cal as we chopstick our way through Korean starters, a Korean straw potato salad, slivers of spud, maybe only blanched if cooked at all, dressed in a tangy oily, pretty delicious chilli sauce, paper noodles done likewise too.

Jays Barbecue (Image: Gordon Terris) And, of course, even though this is your full fat Korean barbecue there’s a touch of Ikea surely in the do-it-yourself hot plate sizzling away before us.

Rib eye steaks in pepper sauce, pork steaks, even two steak fillets crisping right now as we lean into the hot pot kettles beside that, scooping out prawns we’ve just cooked, a big sea-monster strand of glass noodle rising, seaweed squares idly floating, and I threw in all of that fresh coriander.

“Will I do it for you,” the waitress asked as she sprung up to our table earlier, having correctly identified doughballs x 2 sitting here looking puzzled. And so she started tonging meats onto the hot plate, lowering things into the soups while I sat back and supped on my Orange Peel Tea (not sure about the taste of this).

Yes, I’ve been to barbecue and hot pot places before, but the thing about Jay’s here, perched as it is on Glasgow’s Bath Street amongst a cluster of other exotic restaurants including two Maki and Ramens’ and a Taiwanese bubble tea joint, is it is so damn big.

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And busy tonight. Families, couples, groups and plenty looking like they’re from the Asian community too. It’s a Tuesday. Wedged into that post-festive bit of January where our lights are set to their dimmest peep, the weather is at its dankest, and the days still the very darkest.

We need cheering up and, frankly, bubbling broths, one half Shanghai Style (chicken) and the other hot and spicy (Szechuan peppers to numb the tongue), have got the ball rolling.

“It’s quite good fun.” says Cal as we pause with laden plates in front of the sauce section. Black Bean, Peanut Sesame, Crispy Soybean, Sa Cha, Fermented Beancurd and Spiced Beef Granules (nah, no idea either) and on the wall recipes for customers to make their own favourites.

“Take three spoons of peanut sesame, sesame seeds, sprinkled onion and chopped coriander to make your own Old Beijing,” is just one of them.

Now, in our booth? The “next two hours is yours” says the sign on our table which kinda makes sense when we realise that at this particular buffet there is no limit to what you can take.

Jays Barbecue in Bath Street, Glasgow (Image: Gordon Terris) “When grilling steaks we recommend the one-flip approach,” advises the menu along with other how-to-cook-things instructions.

Meh, we plop things in, we stretch meats to sizzle, we then peer, go with the flow and somehow everything, including the slices of raw potato, seems to come out just-about-right.

Those peppered steaks, they’re thin, but get a round two, the pork chops demand a moment to work out whether the flavouring was already on them or has come from other things cooking. Yeah, we go back for more prawns, more of that potato straw salad, they’re supremely more-ish.

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We could have dessert. There are plenty of them sitting in one of those illuminated counters, perhaps a cheeky wee fish course, half the denizens of the deep are perched on that counter by the window, but surprisingly we fill up pretty quickly and are left with question of the night.

How much was this? Honestly, and extremely unusually, I didn’t check before we got fired up, or in. Endless-buffet-hot-pot-bbq-hot-plate-for-two at Monday to Thursday rates £67.98. Seems like a bargain to me.

And space for a Taiwanese dessert at Meet Fresh just down the road.

Menu: Not so much a menu as a choice of broths and advice on how to cook things on your tabletop grill at the help-yourself counters. 4/5

Service: Although it’s a buffet, and you even sizzle-it-yourself, the staff are not far away and always helpful. 4/5

Atmosphere: Bigger than it looks, but crisp, clean and, even on a Tuesday evening, pretty well filled with a gentle cheery buzz. 4/5

Price: It’s around £35 per head mid-week for a pretty much all-you-can-cook. Interesting. Reasonable value. 4/5

Food: They marinated those pepper steaks beforehand, they turn out great potato ribbon salad, the rest was up to us to make the best of. Fun. 6/10

22/30

Jay’s Barbecue

55 Bath Street

Glasgow 

Open: seven days 12-9pm