Ron Mackenna reviews Glasgow Asian cafe Yadgar

DON’T come to the Yadgar for the decor, although they have done something interesting with a lot of pinkish tiles and shiny wipe-clean tables that could be the next big thing. 
Don’t come particularly for the ambience unless, of course, you live locally and your friends come here and, like me, you like places which feel a bit like Roy’s Caff in Coronation Street. 
There’s no need to dress up either, though I’m certainly not the only person wearing a suit. There are businessmen down at the bottom table having a very interesting conversation that, try as I might, I can only catch snatches. But tonight Matthew, it’s mainly a place for blue-collar working folk.
Don’t come if you like your restaurant neighbourhoods to be shiny, brilliantly lit and full of bungalows. Govanhill occasionally seems like the Ellis Island of Glasgow – a good, vibrant, bustling thing in my book – and doesn’t that make it the part of the city that has changed the least from the way we used to live? 
Families cram into tenements, buy most things in the rows of little shops at the bottom of their stairs while every time I go up Allison Street I see people lingering on street corners to chat. I read about this phenomenon in a history book once. Isn’t it called community or something? 
Anyway, we’re here for the food. So don’t come to the Yadgar if the sight of an elephant’s leg rotating on a spit – or a doner kebab as it is commonly known – puts you off. Come to think of it, don’t bother either if you’re going to be put off by some of what’s available for your dinner being out for show in the chill counter. 
Do come if you don’t mind spending 10 minutes choosing from the shiny takeaway-style menu only for the waiter man to rattle off a list of tonight’s specials. Leaving you thinking: damn I want them all, before eventually doing a deal whereby your dinner comes in four bowls so you can try a few things.
Don’t come if you’re a creamy korma kind of person, or an itty-bitty smattering of oil puts you off or even if your whole idea of a curry, say, comes from the more traditional, less authentic Scots-Indian joints. 
In fact, it is perfectly possible to peer at some of these dishes I’m having right now and wonder whether they’re just soup. It’s certainly true of the main course which is, apparently, lamb with turnips. Now, if you’ve already guessed, there may be something clever going on here where the turnip is subtly secreted in the sauce as a sugar substitute then you would be exactly … wrong. 
It’s lamb and some turnips. And that’s it. But the turnips are soft and spicy while the lamb is super tender and the whole thing has a soupy, brothy punch that makes it very easy finish. 
Don’t come if you mind some of your lamb being served on the bone. Or if you peer at a bowl of yellow lentils with some chopped green chillies in it, as I have just done, and think: is that it? Because it’s not. 
Do come if you like to be surprised by butteriness, creamy garlic flavours and a throaty, fiery kick from something that looks very mundane. And come if you like to be surprised by a forkful of dark green spinach that looks like green lead but tastes lemony and light. Or even if you can pick at a bowl of cauliflower and potatoes amid a powerful dry sauce of cumin and think: that’s one of the best things I’ve eaten for a while. 
Do come if you’re tired of boutique food blandness and endless sourcing snobbery. Or if you just need to get out more.