ARTICLES: MONO RESTAURANT, GLASGOW

September 2005

© MARK FISHER published in The Herald

EATING OUT

THE BEST FOR UNLIKELY PLACES

MONO

12 King's Court, King Street, Glasgow

0141 553 2400

Style: Bohemian

Food: Vegan

Dinner: £15 for three courses including glass of wine

Wheelchair access: Yes

SOMETIMES FOOD alone is not enough. Sometimes the exact thing you want is a place for eating at the same time as, say, buying specialist CDs by brilliant and obscure musicians.

Should such a moment happen to you and you find yourself in central Glasgow wrestling with a twin impulse to tuck into a plate of veggie sausages and to buy the latest record by Maher Shalal Hash Baz, you can resolve your quandary by a visit to Mono. This large bar-cum-restaurant-cum-shop is the only destination that makes sense for the modern multitasker about town.

That's why my companion and I resolved to return to Mono even though neither of us was bowled over by our main courses. Sometimes what you want of a restaurant - even more than something good to eat - is a place to hang out and feel comfortable. That's just what you get here in these unlikely corner premises at the end of a row of shops set back off King Street over the car park from the St Enoch Centre.

It's a place that might have been dreamed up a socially conscious student. Imagine if you could drink beer, read books, browse records, play table football and tuck into ethically sourced food all under one atmospherically arched roof. Imagine Mono and imagine spending the whole day there.

Diagonally opposite you as you enter is Monorail, one of the city's coolest record shops, run by fans for fans. It's the baby of Herald critic John Williamson, Stephen Pastel of the Pastels and music lover Dep Downey, with the endorsement of bands such as Teenage Fanclub and Belle and Sebastian. Like the late John Peel, whose genial face is pasted up behind the bar, the music policy is gleefully eclectic, offering new and second-hand specialities from 1930s blues to up-to-the-minute electronica.

You'd expect the noise pollution to be unbearable for those in the adjacent restaurant, with its mix of comfy chairs and functional wooden tables, but it's nothing of the kind. The music is an unassuming background hum as befits the laid-back daytime and early-evening atmosphere. At peak times things can get more raucous, but for the most part it's quiet and unintimidating, as welcoming for singletons as couples.

If you haven't brought your own book, you can browse through a range of paperbacks including Macs for Dummies and Hidden Agendas by John Pilger. That's if you're not transfixed by the sleeve notes for your latest record, of course.

And it really is a place to settle down for a read, maybe with a glass of the homemade ginger beer or lemonade brewed in a row of huge silver vats along one wall. Or perhaps with a cup of Fair Trade coffee from Café Direct with its striking almond taste.

The vegan menu promises to be free from animal, fish, egg and dairy products, which makes the creamy cheesecake all the more impressively succulent for a mere £3 (with an added 50p for maple syrup or similar). You might also try the daily cakes sitting on the bar or choose from snacks such as chips, hummus and pitta bread and veggie nuggets, all of which are reasonably priced.

Ordered at the bar and brought to your table, the main dishes are also good value and filling if not inspiring. We started with a warming, tomato-y minestrone soup (£2.50) and a house salad (£2.75), which was plentiful in lettuce leaves but needed a dressing to liven it up. The Seitan vegetable stir-fry (£7.25) with chilli, ginger and lime with udon noodles was promising but some of the tougher vegetables, such as the carrots, were undercooked - which is still preferable to over-cooking. The smoked tofu vegetable satay with basmati rice lacked the sharpness of a good satay sauce and was gungy in texture.

Vegan cuisine can be better than this and a little more care could transform Mono from a place that's essential to hang out in to somewhere you'd look forward to eating in too.

See other examples of my writing here:

arts politics • celebrity profiles • food • health • literature • music • non-celebrity profiles • opinion pieces • theatre reviews • travel • visual art

Academic • Actors • Agents • Articles • Companies • Festivals • Groups • Industry • Mailing List • Mark Fisher • Others • Reviews • What's On • Writers • Site Map