Bo Kantina
48a West Regent Street, Glasgow
0141 353 6712
Lunch/dinner £20-£30
Food rating 5/10
BO Kantina has slipped into the former premises of one of Glasgow’s charred meat joints, Burger Meets Bun, and is brought to us by the same kitchen team, two chefs with fine dining credentials. Bo Kantina isn’t a relaunch. If you’re still hankering after a burger you’ll have to visit BMB’s Edinburgh restaurant. Could it be that Glasgow is eventually cooling on its burger habit? Here’s hoping.
Bo Kantina is a different proposition entirely from BMB, as follows: “Born from our love of Korean cooking, you’ll find bright and tasty food combining sweet, spicy and pickled influences all shook up with some traditional Western slow cooking topped off with a Mexican twist.” Hence the K (for Korea) in the unorthodox spelling of cantina as kantina, I suppose. As for the accented prefix Bo, which is liberally dotted all over the menu, perhaps a linguist could explain what that’s all about.
The cooking at Bo Kantina is most definitely all shook up. Dazed and confused would be another description. Eating here is like having a clammy travel anxiety dream where you think that you’re setting off for a calm weekend in the Highlands but suddenly find yourself on a flight to Korea that is forced to make an emergency landing in Mexico City.
Are Korean and Mexican cuisines natural bedfellows? I say not, although in the hands of a chef with a consummate grasp of flavours, such as Ottolenghi, there might be the possibility of the odd synergy. No such fortuitous liaison has happened here. The menu reads as though its authors, with only the shallowest grasp of either Korean or Mexican cooking, have turned sorcerer’s apprentice, performing tricks with ingredients they found in a Chinese supermarket, and stocking up on bamboo steamers as they shopped.
The Bo Bar, a dessert, is perhaps the best illustration of disoriented meddling. Described as “peanut butter crunch, sriracha [the currently modish chilli sauce] ganache, denjang [Korean bean paste] caramel, with caramelised peanuts”, this wafer-crisp chocolate confection was a sleek, well-made occidental pudding spoiled by the galumphing intrusion of piquancy and umami.
The savoury menu offers two “Korean” sharing platters featuring either slow-roast pork shoulder or grilled blade of beef, given an Asian riff with pickles, rice, and the inevitable kimchi (fermented cabbage). If you prefer soul food to Seoul food, there’s chicken wings in various treatments, tacos, nachos, “borritos”, rice and salad bowls that you customise with “fired”, marinated, and slow-cooked meats, which you then “top off” with further fusion fireworks, such as “yuzu creme fraiche”. If you’re feeling stressed by all these choices, you can go for Chinese-style steamed buns with pork belly and Hoisin sauce. Just reading this giddy menu makes me feel travel sick.
Still, throwing ourselves into this ragbag of culinary experiment while crossing our fingers that we might, against all odds, be wowed by its creativity, allowed us to appreciate the Bulgogi pork shoulder, a dead ringer for ubiquitous pulled pork, served on crunchy tostadas squirted with kimchi purée under pretty discs of radish and cucumber. Glossily orange crispy king prawns on shredded Chinese leaves and well-bought blue corn tortillas cowered under vinegary pickled cabbage. Chicken wings, although juicy, were oddly anodyne under their shouty miso and chilli paste overlay.
Fried free-range Gartmorn Farm chicken fought for its identity under a kaleidoscope of raw ginger and garlic, the residue from an “Octo vinaigrette”, which apparently also uses rice wine, and soy sauce. “Indonesian beef” rolled in a tortilla with rice and beans tasted less of the lusty flavours of lime leaf, ginger, and kecap [sic] manis that were promised than of quiet tomato. Abrasively acid citrus coriander slaw tested the patience further. Chilled noodle salad formed an island marooned in a lake of surplus dressing. Juicy roast broccoli with garlic, chilli and soy proved to be a godsend,
I understand the rush to dump the burger, but like a dis-United Nations of fractious air passengers packed into a crowded transit lounge, this hybrid cuisine is going nowhere fast. But then Glasgow has a taste (fickle and fleeting, be warned!) for culinary novelty. Bo Kantina could yet prove to be a runway (sorry, runaway) success.
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