Eating Out: too soon to tell for Indian Platform?

It didn’t surprise me that the new restaurant — Indian Platform Southside, which replaces Ivy India at 340 Ayr Road, Newton Mearns — drew hundreds of hungry guests for a freebie buffet.

But that they were prepared to wait up to 45 minutes — yes, I timed it: twice — for a free pakora and then the same again for the mains was somewhat reminiscent of the “more” scene from Dickens’

The bloke in front of me mitigated queueing for a second time by piling a mountain of poppadoms, pakora, chicken and lamb chop starters precariously atop a jaw-dropping pile of mains. He had to come back for the sauces, naan bread and rice.

I certainly wasn’t going back to line up for all the lamb karahi in India so I asked one of the waitresses to procure a selection of dishes, which she happily obliged to do — albeit the thumb prints on the plate challenged my gagging reflex.

The food was typical buffet style — although I have had better — despite three different flavours of poppadom.

I couldn’t help thinking, though, that Platform missed a trick with their launch night.

Even if buffet-stylee is easier to cope with than table service, I at least expected the executive chef to showcase some of his most favoured a la carte specials.

After all, those are the hero dishes, the ones we’ll pay that bit extra to savour rather than wolfing down all-you-can-eat on buffet trough nights.

Don’t get me wrong; I realise the opening melee wouldn’t be the norm and none of the dishes I tasted were bad, albeit the lack of labels on the buffet table left me guessing.

But I would at least have expected to see what the a la carte and the wine list had to offer.

Verdict: worth a second chance to try the tempting tandoori jhinga or machi, zingy zarila nash or moreish-sounding mangsho johl.

The Indian Platform 2 (Southside)

340 Ayr Road

Newton Mearns

G77 6RT