Friday 28 March 2008

'Could be good, could be bad..'

invariably means bad. Eating out for me is a mixture of about 40% trepidation 50% disappointment and 10% pleasure. With stats like that why do I even bother? It must be the eternal optimist in me or the fact that every once in a while a jem is uncovered and some sort or intermittent reinforcement takes place.

This however, was not one of those occasions.

Bar Soba is a bar that serves Asian fusion snack food. We (myself and my long suffering friend and often - times dining companion K) had popped in to kill some time before going to see The Orphanage (which, coincidentally, was very good if a bit scary - I had to hide behind my hands at least four times. It wasn't, as I had originally thought, directed by Guillermo Del Toro but produced by him, maybe he is saving his energy for the Hobbit!).

Bar Soba started off well (despite it's name, which I think the owners meant to evoke the notion of noodles but in a city like Glasgow it seems more of an oxymoron: Bar Soba/Bar Sober), with a good beer selection and after settling on a
Tsingtao we looked forward to our prawn crackers (good, spicy brown ones) thai beef carpaccio ( bad - dry beef, limp lifeless salad) and chicken ayam satay (so-so chicken moist, but not that tasty).



All in all it was a bit disappointing, with a little more care or more precisely a little more red curry paste in that satay sauce; a little fish sauce and lime juice on the salad, and a little more char on the chicken, this food could have gone from disappointing to satisfying.

See, this is what makes me sad: with a little more thought this could have been a place I could have happily come back to. My friend observed: 'maybe you just expect too much?'. I thought about it and then thought 'No! Why should I lower my standards? Let them raise theirs!'. It might indeed transpire that I am a fussy bugger but I shall continue to expect more, and to get less.

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