Garlic bread...

A great evening greed-snack.

Bella Italia, Hope Street, Glasgow

Simply disgusting. In fact, I was really disappointed to realise that almost all the food I've had in Scotland over the past three days has been pretty revolting. And weirdly, everything tasted of chemicals - I'm not sure why. Could it be the water or something? The Ibis hotel's red pepper and tomato soup that I had when we arrived seemed ok, but left me with a pretty sicky feeling in my stomach over the next 12 hours. Gross. Then, on Sunday, in a bit of a rush, we were trying to find somewhere that was open for food - no easy feat as it was pouring with rain and everywhere seemed to be shut. So we ducked into Bella Pasta, thinking that at least we'd get a warming meal. This was what I got.

It was supposed to be penne pasta, baked in a spicy diavola sauce, with chicken, pepperoni, peppers and red onion. The pasta was hard as nails; it certainly wasn't oven-baked - it had clearly been tipped into the dish and shoved under the grill/in the oven for too long; the sauce was fairly flavourless; the chicken was flabby, and generally it just didn't taste very nice. My boyfriend had a chicken in white wine 'oven-baked' pasta and had stomach pains for the next 24 hours.

We shared some garlic bread. But who makes garlic bread by slicing some bread and simply pouring some butter over a tiny section of each slice? I don't want to have three-quarters normal bread with no butter and a few bites of garlicy, butter-soaked bread - I want it all to be garlicky. Very strange.

I didn't say anything to the waiter - to be honest I felt so deadened by the whole experience I couldn't be bothered. A very depressing place to eat - don't even bother, even if you're stumbling around Glasgow trying to get out of the drenching rain.

Sadly blogger can't seem to put up photos at the moment - I'll put them up as soon as I can.

Seafood salad

So, so tasty. A seafood selection (baby octopus, squid, prawns, cuttlefish, mussels) marinated in lemon juice, garlic, extra-virgin olive oil, a pinch of sugar, crushed chillies, Provencal herbs and seasoning, with half a red onion, lots of tomatoes, a few olives and a yellow pepper, all diced finely... just lovely, especially with some garlic bread - a great Saturday lunch. Shame about the breath though.