Mikaku, 25 Queen Street, Glasgow G1 3EF (0141 221 0573). All dishes £4.50-£9; wine £12.95
Night has come to Glasgow and with it an insistent, drenching rain of a sort often gifted by the Atlantic to Scotland’s west coast when autumn comes. The outer panels of the Hydro arena down by the Clyde are glowing in candy shades of pink and sky blue, as if it’s ready to return to the planet that dispatched it, and on Queen Street the gutters are overflowing. Most restaurateurs would despair at weather like this. Presumably the owners of Mikaku, a self-styled izakaya, or Japanese-inspired inn, are not among them. It all just adds to the vibe.
One of those owners described it to the website Glasgow Live when they opened last spring as a “neo-Tokyo dystopian style” and we’ll have to take their word for it. It’s gilded in neon. The floor is a faux cobbled lane, complete with manholes. It’s edged with communal tables under lean-to roofs and food outlets with their own counters, as if it’s a street food alley. Corrugated iron sheeting has been pressed into service.
There are two ways to go here. You can engage in a bout of championship eye-rolling, while muttering about theme-park dining and trying too hard, that might make you feel superior; or you can acknowledge that most restaurant design is a version of this: an attempt to create a space that separates you from the world outside. For what it’s worth, I’ve eaten my way around the tightly knotted streets of inns and cafés in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district and Mikaku would fit in there. The Japanese adore a bit of overblown, comic-book kitsch. They’d get it. So why shouldn’t we?
Likewise, I think they’d get the food. While there are izakayas that have raised the cooking far beyond what was originally expected of them, at base they are meant to provide something to soak up the booze: the endless chilled glasses of Asahi and Sapporo, the cocktails with names like Electric Lychee and Ginger Zen. Or in our case the serviceable sauvignon blanc at £12.95 a bottle. That wasn’t me being a cheap. They only have one choice of red, white or rosé. All of them are £12.95. We drag warm, salt-sprinkled edamame pods through our teeth to get at the beans inside, and try to focus on the graphic violence of the place-mat menu.
I could now niggle about certain details and I will, because it’s part of my job description. I have to raise an eyebrow over the thickness of the noodles in their ramen and wonder whether they are the exact alkaline variety they should be. I must point out that the tonkotsu stock, which should have the lip-smack of gelatine from pork bits simmered for half a day until the bones have given their all, is a little on the insubstantial side. But the impact of the cooking here is cumulative and is so much more than the sum of those parts.
The site was previously a ramen shop, run by the same people, before they extended the menu and became this. Pleasingly, they offer half portions at £4.50; Lilliputian miniatures in small bowls that allow you to go face down in them without filling up to the exclusion of the rest of the offering. The slices of chashu belly pork in the tonkotsu ramen are soft and sweet and salty, with just the right balance of fat to meat. In a miso black ramen, with burnt garlic oil and more slices of garlic cooked until crisp, there are pearly pieces of chicken breast. The rest of it – the sliced spring onions, the leaves of nori, the sprinkle of sesame seeds – is all very much here.
We have a large portion of their chicken karaage for £6.50 because, like any sane, properly brought up, interesting person, I am powerless in the face of thigh first dumped in a soy-based marinade then given a dusting of seasoned cornflour and finally deep fried. It is that ludicrously compelling combination of crispy and salty; of soft, tenderised meat steamed in its shell, and crumbly bits that mustn’t be allowed to escape. There’s a dollop of sweetened chilli sauce on the side and some mayo. It’s a subtle, understated dish in the way that Rylan Clark-Neal’s teeth are subtle. But the rain is still coming down, and the wine is still flowing, which means this fried chicken is necessary.
There is an attempt at self-care courtesy of a well-made wakame salad of slippery ribbons of seaweed, with just the right bite, in a soy and sesame dressing. Then it’s on to the chicken wings, presented unjointed, with the awkward geometry of pointed tip to drummer. They are tricky and messy to eat like this, but the staff are watching. They chuck wet wipes on to the table as if they are life preservers thrown to the drowning.
The sweet soy and sesame versions with their crisp shell are worth the mess and very much worth the price at £2.90 for two. I also order a pair of the hot variety in “Oni Demon” sauce. The cheery Glaswegian waitress looks at me kindly and says, “Are you sure, hen?” I wave her away with the casualness of a man who has seen many things and will see many more. It turns out I haven’t seen this. They are red and they are angry and they make my diaphragm go into spasm and sweat pool under my eyes. Coming to Mikaku has been a good idea. Ordering these has not been a good idea. I manage one. She takes away the other, with the nod of a woman who knew it would come to this.
Grilled skewers of pork, beef and chicken with spring onion, at around £2 each, are smoky and seared in all the right places. We’ve avoided the gyoza, because they’d told me they bought them in rather than made them here. However, the dessert menu includes fried apple gyoza with butterscotch sauce, and they cannot be resisted: they’re a tiny version of an apple Pop-Tart. I mean that in a good way. They’re certainly better than the weird peanut-butter ice cream. No matter. There’s enough left in the bottle to deaden the taste. We pay the modest bill, bow our heads in thanks to Mikaku for showing us a good time, and head out through the ostentatious weather to nearby Hope Street, and a blues jam at the club Swing. After all the damn piano isn’t going to play itself.
Jay’s news bites
Koj, the cheery Cheltenham restaurant from MasterChef finalist Andrew Kojima, does not claim to be an izakaya, but it does boast a “beer food menu”, which pretty much makes it one. There’s a list of buns, filled with the likes of pork belly, apple and kimchi or panko cauliflower with curry mayo, as well as udon noodles, donburi rice bowls, various ramen and the obligatory fried chicken (kojcheltenham.co.uk).
There was scepticism when McDonald’s announced it would be available for delivery through the likes of Uber Eats. Who would bother to get something as cheap as McDonald’s delivered? A lot of people, it seems. Delivery is now available at 950 of its sites and, according to the company, accounts for more than 10% of all their business in the UK. On 18 September McDonald’s says it received a record 124,000 delivery orders.
Major churn in the London restaurant world. Martin Morales’s Peruvian restaurant group Ceviche is to appoint administrators after a period of “incredibly tough” trading. High-end Chinese restaurant Duddells has closed at London Bridge, siting planning issues. Breddos Tacos has closed its central London outpost and chef Mark Hix is in talks to close his Soho restaurant.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
