The waitress doesn’t really hesitate when we ask if they sell much of this Korean Bo Ssam stuff; it being a salty £26 a sharing platter. We’ve sold four already tonight, she says, looking round this half-full basement joint. And indeed later, much later, a couple of older young dudes will squeeze into the tiny table beside our tiny table and order up a steak version, Bo Steak or whatever.
By then we’ll be up to our oxters in tacos and tostados and very messy wings, our fingers will be stained red with kimchi juices, our noses numbed by lashings of free wasabi peas.
And on the empty table next to us, because there is no more room on ours, pork shoulder, kimchi, spring onion in pickle juices and a bowl of brown rice will sit quietly waiting to be wrapped in lettuce leaves. This being the Bo Ssam, in case you are wondering.
This is also what we all may, or may not, be eating when the burger bubble well and truly pops. Korean food is no doubt very popular in Korea but far more importantly it is currently the fad of the year in the United States, especially in a taco meets kimchi way.
Recently this place was called Burger Meats Bun and it stepped ashore in the very first wave of the artisany burger craze which has ended up creating a zombie-like total saturation of the restaurant scene with many new burger joints just as dead if not deader in a taste sense than those that were there before the fad.
Burger Meats Bun – at this location anyway – has gone and in its place this: a mash up of street foods and street fads. The stylish, cute, slightly clever burgery decor that used to greet customers when they reached the bottom of the stairs and entered the basement has gone and in its place there's a plainer more splattered-paint canteen feel.
I may have mentioned this before but the tables are too small for the type of dishes, and tonight our table is also slightly sticky.
To begin we have Indonesian terong balado – or aubergine in chilli – tostadas followed by crisp little tacos with Indonesian chilli beef and something called boffalo sauce, both powerfully flavoured in a sweet, salty conversation-stopping sort of way and topped with lashings of fresh coriander.
Kimchi wings come covered in the red, spicy, salty, garlicky, cabbagey dish that Koreans create by taking a pot of the above ingredients and burying it at the bottom of the garden.
The kimchi is a super-powerful flavour that I like but the wings themselves are stringy, rubbery and borderline unpleasant.
The best dish of the night, Joe and I agree, is actually sweet little broccoli spears in garlic ginger and soy, but by then we haven’t tried the Bo Ssam.
To be upfront about this? Neither of us are actually hugely thrilled by the whole wrapping the rice and pickles and kimchi and sizeable heap of not-very pulled pork in the cold, wet lettuce, but we manage one each and then just dunk pork in the chilli sauce.
Perhaps if this was the only dish we had ordered we would attack it with more enthusiasm, like the guys sitting beside us are doing, but it’s a pretty familiar theme from Chinese cooking. Although it largely leaves the choice of flavour combinations to us, it doesn’t blow me away.
Apart from the first two dishes which tasted fresh and bright there’s a strong sugary, salty overtone to the rest which eventually becomes a bit stupefying.
A chilli and chocolate and peanut dessert follows at £6 which comes on a plate that seems designed to emphasis how small it is. I like it. Joe finds it too spicy.
Is this the next big thing? It’s USA-fresh while still a little bit different and crammed with flavours, but are they the right flavours? Or is it all too sweet and sickly?
Bo Kantina
48 West Regent Street
Glasgow
0141 353 6712
Menu: Korean kimchi meets tacos meets Indonesia meets the sharing Ssam. Born in the USA; still different in Scotland. 4/5
Atmosphere: It’s a canteen in a basement and while the tables are small and the music surfy and cool it’s not the most comfortable. 3/5
Service: Pleasant enough, seemed a little bit pressed and yet hovered around or by the table so much we felt a bit hurried. 3/5
Price: Tacos and tostadas at around £4 a pair are good value. Broccoli at £3.50; even better Ssam at £26 to share is up there price-wise. 4/5
Food: Slew of whole newish flavour combinations that come across light and exciting in certain dishes, but can also just be sugary and salty in others due to over reliance on sauces. Ssam is merely OK. 5/10
19/30
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