The company behind popular Glasgow restaurant Ox and Finch have announced the opening of a second restaurant.
Ka Pao will open in January 2020 within the historic, Category A-listed Botanic Gardens Garage on Vinicombe Street, which is located off Byres Road.
Housed in the basement of the distinctive white and green tiled West End landmark Ka Pao – the name derives from the Thai word for Holy Basil – will offer a menu influenced by the cooking of South East Asia.
The restaurant has also been designed by Stuart Black: Head of Interior Design at Mosaic, who was also responsible for the interiors of Ox and Finch.
The opening has created 35-full time roles, including senior chefs and restaurant management roles.
Jonathan MacDonald, owner and chef, said "I have had an enormous amount of respect for the approach to food in South East Asia for as long as I have been cooking. The fascination was really ignited when I spent a lot of time working and travelling in that part of the world in my twenties. Living and working in Melbourne was also a big inspiration, as South-East Asian flavours and influences are uniquely interwoven in Australian cooking.
"Some of my most memorable cooking and eating experiences have been in Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand; sometimes in impressive restaurants, but more often on plastic stools by the side of the road”
The restaurant will announce their menu at the beginning of January, with the dishes listed likely to include messy prawns, orange, tamarind and palm sugar caramel; squash and potato curry, cardamom, cumin and coconut; slow-cooked pork cheeks, shiitake mushrooms, star anise and galangal.
Director Daniel Spurr said: “Ka Pao is not about trying to be authentic or replicating the food of any particular region or country. The guiding principle will be more about taking inspiration from dishes, ingredients and flavour combinations that we have encountered, that have influenced us and combining them with our own local produce.”
Visit Ka Pao's website for more information on menus, bookings and more.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article