Reviews

On the chronic-issues side is the danger of becoming jaded. When you only eat out once in a while, with your own cash, as most people do, you really want to like what you get and you don't have much to judge it against. For me, the entire restaurant scene is stretched out for inspection, and trends and fashions emerge. You see one too many seared tuna or sticky toffee pudding - there are simply far too many formulaic restaurants serving the same thing, indifferently cooked, for a considerable sum. For people who cook well at home, "Why bother eating out at all?" has become a most pertinent question.

Many restaurants, especially urban ones, are set up by businessmen with a 'concept'. They write the menu before they even hire the chef. You get a corporate restaurant, often opulently kitted out, minus a beating foodie heart. What I crave is restaurants run by people who stamp their personality on their food, people who cook with dedication and principles, people who are incapable of compromising on effort or standards, no matter how commercial that might be. I've found such a gem in Glasgow with Cafe Hula.

To the passing gaze, it looks like a studenty sandwich bar/coffee shop. At lunchtime it does a huge sandwich trade. Give me this over a tooth-chilling Pret a Manger job any day. This is a warm space, cranky, idiosyncratically furnished, almost pathologically amateurish and ad hoc, and a refreshing one-off antidote to the Starbucks and Pizza Expresses of the world. I love this sort of quirky environment but I'll admit I didn't have huge expectations of the cooking. How wrong I was. At Cafe Hula, on an evening after the daytime grazing crowds moved off, I ate some of the best food I've had in a long time with the glorious bonus of charitably low prices.

This is relaxed, but not sloppy cooking, a mature, confident product from chef-proprietors Rachel MacTavish and Hugh McArthur who palpably understand the fundamentals of good food.

This food is hard to pigeonhole. There is an affinity for Spanish, you might say Moorish or Middle-Eastern cuisine, but this is not a straightjacket. Slow-baked lamb with leeks and fennel was the most elemental kind of soul food, fork-tender lamb in an aromatic sauce of great complexity with several layers of deep, subtle seasoning - cardamom, chilli, cloves, star anise and more - overlaid with the fragrance of fresh mint.

A chicken and chorizo stew went beyond a combination of harmonious ingredients into another dimension of well-judged, slowcooked flavours that thrilled the palate.

I have never had a better burger anywhere and Cafe Hula's has a truly addictive consistency, ever so slightly gelatinous and expertly char-grilled. Every element on the plate is full of great flavours. Fried potatoes are good enough to eat on their own. Add a spoonful of their sweet, supple red onion relish though and you're really in heaven. At heart, these dishes conjured up for me the very best sort of home or peasant cooking, the sort that nurtures the soul in the way that show-off cheffy cooking doesn't. But taste the pastry dishes and you realise that this informality is born out of sound kitchen training. A tartlet of moist, white smoked haddock with crumbly sandy pastry, served on a herby salad dressed with an assertive sweet-sour vinaigrette was entirely beguiling. Once again, I cannot remember ever having a better lemon and lime tart - and at £2.50 only.

I look forward to eating in Cafe Hula as often as possible. It's a spiritual home from home.