Usha's Indian Vegetarian, Byres Road










I'm not really sure what I want to say about this place. I love Indian cuisine and spend far too much time in restaurants of that persuasion. and I love that there is another vegetarian restaurant opened up in Glasgow which also marks out the vegan dishes.

But I'm not sure how I felt about this place. The burger (vada pav on the menu) I had for starters was absolutely delicious but I'm not overall convinced of how authentically Indian it is (it is from the street food section, and Indian street food isn't something I have much experience of). But the naan and the curry I had were of a normal and average quality. It has been noted by quite a few veggies I know that Indian restaurants generally have a good veggie offering so its not as though we need to go to a vegetarian-only one to enjoy this genre of cuisine (I'd spend all my wages in one go if a veggie-only Mexican or burger joint opened up).

This place has had a bad rep for poor customer service, and I can see why. The girl who served us was lovely and was clearly trying her best (there were over ten of us) but there were a few cock-ups. The guy was helped take the food to us wasn't very helpful describing which dish was which and wouldn't help us decipher who's was who (which led to a vegan taking a bite of something with paneer cheese in it) and there's a 'chilli scale' to help you decide how hot you want something, but I stated level 1 (because I'm a whimp) but ended up with something spicy but someone who ask for level 4 said he could barely taste it. They also had a weird thing about giving out lots of plates to go along with the dishes the food came on - the idea is tapas but some of us didn't need to the extra plates cause we ordered one thing....

(I'm a former waitress and I'm usually very understanding if a place cocks up slightly as I know it's a much more stressful job than most people realise but I feel in this situation it was worth commenting on)

Again, there's not much I can say that I didn't say at the start. I want to say it was brilliant as the opening of this place shows that vegetarianism and veganism is on the rise, but I just can't. It's not terrible and it was very modestly priced. But, meh, go along and make up your mind!

Morag x