There is not a lot of Buddha about Budda, which perhaps explains why this new Glasgow cellar restaurant is spelled the way it is. The name is clearly meant to tease. Whatever its inspiration, it carries gastronomic implications which remain deliberately unfulfilled. In a city strong on Asian cooking, and on every permutation of east-west fusion food, here is a place almost wholly and surprisingly British.

You would not think so from the decor. Once you have descended the narrow outdoor steps, you enter a mysterious candle-lit grotto and grope your way through to the restaurant at the rear. En route you can pause for a drink at the long bar which confirms, though only just, that you have come to the right address.

In the restaurant, which is equally dark, there are more candles, not only on the tables but in gothic-shaped alcoves, or in exotic metal handle frames, or fixed to the terracotta-coloured walls. Big chunky seats, like padded church pews, and square pillars add to

the ecclesiastical air, though the precise denomination is unclear. Hispano-Oriental was as close as I could get before I gave up and chose a mille-feuille of quail with a beetroot sauce as my first course.

The cuisine, on the whole, is much easier to identify. It is modern British, and rather good, with an occasional Italian overtone in the form of polenta, risotto and parmesan cheese. Unlike the decor, the effect seems unassertive, even under-stated, though only in the sense that it allows good ingredients to speak for themselves. Where another Glasgow kitchen might drown the quail in beetroot, this one provided no more than a smudge of dark-red liquid. The amount seems exactly right.

Nor, as happens all too often, does the quality of the starter detract from the excitement of the main dish. Here the one enhances the other, at least if, like me, you order a pave of monkfish, which lives up to its name by being served in a single pure-white slab, untainted by some distressingly inappropriate marinade or half-submerged in honey, lemon grass or pesto. Instead it imposingly surmounts a fashionably (but not irksomely) twice-baked potato, high above the lightest and most gentle of chive-and-mussel sauces; brilliant.

Nor, at this dangerous point, does the meal begin to falter. The cheese, named on the menu, is explorateur - an excellent choice. The puddings include a bitter chocolate marquis, genuinely black and bitter, its flavour intensified by shredded orange peel.

Budda's kitchen in its first months has already survived with ease a sudden change of chef. The cooking, originally ex-Glasgow Hilton, remains ex-Glasgow Hilton, and it shows in the competence, finesse and deft presentation of what is served.

Though the ambience is very different, this is a restaurant to compete with Edinburgh's Winter Glen, recent recipient of a Good Food Guide accolade, and Nairns in Glasgow.

The wine list is short, with Chilean leanings. Lunch is cheaper and more casual than dinner, which is the meal that matters. The music is loud, though not quite so loud that it damages the food, conversation or whatever you happen to be reading or writing. All the same, in a restaurant of such serious ambition, this is something that may need to be changed.

In Havana, which lies round the corner and down the hill, the music is more insistent and, unless you are really passionate about relentlessly cheerful Latin-American modernity, more exasperating.

Even newer than Budda, this is Glasgow's first Cuban, or Cuban-style, restaurant, though it is not the sort of environment

in which you could imagine yourself encountering Ernest Hemingway.

Hemingway would probably have been happier in the place as it once was, for these are the premises originally occupied by the Central Hotel's great Malmaison restaurant, where an older generation of gastronome tucked into rognons de veau flambes at just over #1 a portion - ''if you can afford it'', as Raymond Postgate pointedly remarked in the Good Food Guide in 1970.

At Havana, served amid bold orange and turquoise decor, a portion of grilled - and somewhat greasy - flat bread costs #1.50. However, other prices, by 1998 standards, look reasonable, even if #4.25 for a glass (admittedly large) of Chilean sauvignon seems steep. Cuban cooking, on the evidence here, comes somewhere between Spanish and Mexican. Tapas - symbolised by spare ribs with mushy red pepper jam - tend to be fiery, but the menu, as a whole, is heavily based on formula and the sweet potatoes are disappointingly dull.

''Havana wraps'' are rolled tortillas containing the same ingredients as the tapas. Salads provide further variations on the same theme, as do the main courses, house specials and side orders.

Simple dishes seem the best bet. Garlic and lime pan-fried shrimps are better on their own as one of the tapas than as a main course elaborated with green salad and stodgy Cuban rice. The wines are very Chilean, with traces of Spain and Italy.

Restaurants can score up to 20 points for cooking, 10 for wine, 10 for atmosphere, 10 for service, with bonus points for features such as bread, cheese, olive oil, or an exceptional balance between price and quality.

l Budda, 142 St Vincent Street, Glasgow. (tel 0141-243 2212). Three-course dinner for two with a modest bottle of wine, about #50. Cooking 13/20; Wine 5/10; Atmosphere 7/10; Service 7/10. Bonus 1. Total: 33/50

l Havana, 50 Hope Street, Glasgow. (tel 0141 248 4466). Three-course meal for two with a modest bottle of wine, about #40. Cooking 5/20; Wine 4/10; Atmosphere 5/10; Service 5/10. Bonus 0. Total: 19/50