Joanna Blythman

I’ve been longing to eat Korean food ever since seeing Bong Joon-Ho’s phenomenal Oscar-winning film, Parasite, his interrogation of class and wealth on the plate. The wealthy mother tells her housekeeper to prepare jjapaguri, essentially an everyday dish, commonly made with two sorts of instant noodles. What makes this one exclusive and upper class is its topping of steak, from indigenous, highly prized Hanwoo cattle, which is way more expensive than Waygu beef would be here. Only the Korean

‘Our roots are in Italy, in all the memories and traditions that we jealously keep, in all the passion and attention we give to food and good ingredients.” I’m a sucker for this stuff. And it goes on. “All our pasta is homemade using organic flour, eggs and extra virgin olive oil.

The Educated Flea, the Prancing Stag, the Bonnie Badger, the Bath Street Palamino, the Crafty Pig, the Hyndland Fox, why do restaurants pick names that sound like children’s storybook titles? I can never remember them. All they trigger is a distracted mental search, along the lines of: “That restaurant at the corner of X and Y, the Befuddled Baboon, or something.”

It gives you a new perspective on a restaurant when you’re eating with someone who has Type 1 diabetes. How much carb is in each dish? That’s what she needs to know, so she can balance it with insulin. My interest is less life and death, but having gravitated to the low-carb side of the Great Nutrition Debate, I’m interested to hear what Ka Pao, this new south-east Asian centric outfit, has to say for itself. Most restaurants would struggle, but this is a fluent, informative reply.

Built in 1900, the old fire station at 33 Ingram Street, Glasgow, exemplifies the artistic dynamism, craft, skill and optimism of that period, where no effort was spared for municipal buildings.

Chez Mal, Malmaison, 21-22, St Andrews Square, Edinburgh

Very few restaurateurs push the boat out for fish. In truth, the majority of restaurants are half-hearted about it. They buy it in already filleted, often frozen, even ready cooked: boil-in-the-bag moules marinières, for instance. Their default options are the ever available Turkish and Greek farmed sea bass and bream, which are guaranteed to arrive at roughly the same weight every time, and that travesty of wild fish that emerges from Scotland’s squalid, seabed-souring salmon cages.

Italian food is the planet’s hands-down, uncontested crowd-pleaser. Kkazakh or Kenyan, Haitian or Hungarian, Japanese or Javanese, Peruvian or Polish, Iraqi or Irish, it’s the culinary repertoire of ‘il bel paese’ that gets a universal thumbs-up.

Small restaurants are easy to fill, and customers like that. Dining in an otherwise empty or undersubscribed restaurant is a discomfiting experience. What does the rest of the world know that you don’t?

Gloriosa, 1321 Argyle Street, Glasgow, 0141 334 0594