MARK SMITH
88 West Regent Street, Glasgow 0141 332 2424
Style: Caring for the planet, but in a modern way. No throws. No whale music.
Food: Tasty vegetarian
Price: Price: £8-£10
Wheelchair access: No
Oh, this is refreshing. A cafe that's neither part of a chain, with its corporate mugs and corporate grins, nor one of those smaller cafes that, like goths, try really hard to be different and end up all looking the same. I'm going to like this.
It's called Entrading and is a combined high-street eco shop and cafe, with everything designed by its owners, James and Artemis Curran, to minimise its impact on the environment. The shop is great: unsnobbish, browseable and, thank goodness, not run by people with that liberal resentfulness you get in some other green shops.
It's the cafe, though, that really makes the place. Not only are the Curran family willing to lean on the counter and have a chat, not only is the decoration really clean and stylish (who thought of the projector - because you are brilliant), not only is there a big pile of papers to encourage you to linger, but the food is inventive, too.
Instead of the usual, tedious, railway-buffet type of vegetarian food that menu writers in other cafes come up with because they can't be bothered to think of something cleverer, we've got the good idea of a platter. You can choose four items off the menu, and combine them with a roll. The coleslaw is brilliant. It clearly isn't made in a factory on an estate somewhere and then shipped in trucks around the country. It's made here and they've got the secret of good slaw: go really, really easy on the mayonnaise. It's so crunchy, people turn round and look when I bite into it. There's also big sexy tomatoes, a wonderfully clumsy green salad and squishy veggie sausages.
Ah, but I haven't mentioned the soup. The tomato makes me jealous: it's gloopy, warming and served in a cement mixer of a bowl. The lentil lacks personality, but then lentil has always been the kind of soup that would never get a date. It's so dull and boring. It doesn't matter though, because you can swerve round it to something more tasty.
They've nailed it with this cafe. Good idea, good food, good chat, good looks. My belly is filled, and my conscience is cleansed. You would tell me if I was sounding smug, wouldn't you?
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