Glasgow Food Stories: We visit the team at Ka Pao to learn about their extraordinary fusion cooking

Located in a basement unit on Vinicombe Street, Ka Pao is one of Glasgow’s hottest restaurants. Blending Southeast Asian cuisine with the Scottish larder, it has developed a reputation as a must visit in the West End.

We caught up with Sandy Browning, head chef, to hear more.

Glasgow World: Just for anybody who doesn't know about Ka Pao, tell us what it is.

Sandy Browning: So Ka Pao is a South East Asian inspired restaurant. We've taken quite a lot of influence from our time in Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. We've been fortunate enough to go out there with work a few times. And so it's really about using those flavors and combining them with as much local produce as possible.

GW: Is it fusion cooking that you like doing?

SB: 100% it's trying to use that Scottish larder, the fresh seafood, the great butcher we've got here, and the vegetables as well. It's trying to use them and trying to use the flavour profiles that maybe people aren't as aware of if they haven't been out to Southeast Asia.

It's really just trying to get the most out of them. Obviously, we have to import a lot of food in terms of your coconut, your lemongrass and stuff that doesn't grow naturally in this cold, damp, wet climate.

But where we can, we use the produce that we do have on our doorstep.

GW: Tell me a bit about the building, it used to be a car garage?

SB: Yep, this is an old car garage. Arnold Clark still own the building here. We are fortunate enough to have one of the spaces here and. And they spent quite a lot of time and a lot of money to completely transform the building and you. Only six or seven years ago, it still had the old school petrol pumps in it and stuff like that.

I think it was one of the first car garages in Glasgow. So, it’s really quite iconic. The green and white tiles outside are very striking. We try to bring that colour, the colour of the menus, and a lot of the branding is to match the kind of colour of those tiles outside. It's a special place to be in.

GW: Obviously, a lot of spotlight in recent times has been in Margo and Sebbs. It's the same group that you guys are from. This is the first time I've been in here. It's a really big, bright space.

SB: Coming into the basement, you think it's going to be a bit more like Sebbs, in a way. You've got Sebbs as that kind of great underground basement bar, which has got such a great atmosphere to it as well.

But we're fortunate enough to still get quite a lot of natural light inside too, as well. It really is quite a big space. We are set up for 240 people. On a Saturday we're doing up to about 550 covers. So it's busy. It's a busy place, but it's what we want, one as many people in here as possible.

GW: What is your typical clientele that you get in?

SB: Very eclectic. We really get a mix of everything. The menu is specifically designed around that as well. We wanted it to be as inclusive as possible. So, obviously, with it being Southeast Asian, there's a lot of spice that's in there, but we've got dishes in there that aren't crazy on spice. Allergen wise, we're quite fortunate in terms of, there's little to no dairy getting used due to a lot of coconut milk.

A lot of our dishes are gluten free. And so we want it to be a place where people can really come and they can come here with a good mix of people, if it's young, older, and people with dietary requirements, whatever it is, people with severe allergens. We want to be a place where we can cater for all, and especially with the size of the restaurant as well, it's important that we make it a very welcoming place.

GW: Do you find that the menu evolves with time? Is that something that you're always working at?

SB: Yeah, oh, 100%. I mean, we've been open for five and a half years now. And if we look back into what the menu was five and a half years ago, I'd probably cringe looking at it. I really don't think it was great, and that was just from our experience as well.

It was received very well and I guess from that we've managed to learn. We've been fortunate enough to go over to Thailand again a few times, and we’ll hopefully do that again soon as well.

The chefs have been with us as well since the start, and we're now at the point where Ashley Bennett is the head chef here. She was a chef de partie when she started out, and she was here for the opening; she's now progressed to the head chef.

So we've been really lucky that the food on the menu has managed to grow and change and become, I think, the best iteration of itself. It still changes about three or four times a year. Big changes to match in with the seasons, and then we'll have smaller changes here and there. So. It's about keeping it fresh and vibrant.

GW: What would be your picks in the Ka Pao menu?

SB: We’ve got our beef shot rib skewers that are on the menu just now. Those are one of the snacks that we've got that just went on last week. That was a dish we made for Meatopia. That was one Ashley developed. It took about three months of development for it, she kept on tweaking it and playing around with it. It was received really well at Meatopia, so it's a big thing to then put it on the menu.

I'd say that Jungle curry of cod cheeks is probably still one of my favorites. That's one we've had on the menu and taken off and tweaked a little bit, but it's really nice, kind of quite intensely spicy, aromatic broth with the really nice ones cod cheeks from John Vallance, nice pork belly as well. There's great ones there. Fried chicken in the corn rib. That’s one of the ones that sell the most and the ones that have been on the menu since the start.