Gaby Soutar visits Nonya, Glasgow

Whenever it’s taps off, it’s also tea’s oot.

On my last visit to Glasgow, all along the Finnieston strip, drinkers and diners were baking themselves, laid out like shiny Barbies and Action Men on a jumble sale trestle table. Through Kelvingrove Park, there were puffs of smoke from barbecues (or maybe they were just fires), like the dry ice in a Stephen King horror.

Yeah, I’m not really a huge fan of eating outdoors.

When I saw that this two-monthold southeast Asian restaurant was situated on a shady corner at the rear of the block, I was as happy as a woodlouse crawling under a rock.

They seated me at the perfect spot – on a high barstool, by a mercifully open window.

As I was dining alone, I quickly made friends with the Venus flytrap and trumpet pitcher on my sill. I shall call them Spike and Ethel.

They were great conversationalists, though TMI about irritable bug syndrome, and one does get tired of the Little Shop of Horrors soundtrack.

I think they would have liked a sip of my Dime Piece cocktail (£8.50), though it’s best not to give carnivorous plants alcohol, since they’re prone to getting bite-y. This drink was a pleasantly dry and bitter blend of reposado tequila, Campari, kumquat, dill and citrus with, oddly, a dusting of lava salt on the body of the glass. I suppose you could lick this off the glass or your palms, though it just made my fingers sticky.

Food here has a Thai, Malay and Chinese vibe, and, as well as Bar Snacks, there’s a list of dishes served in small (my choices) or large.

It might seem a bit incongruous, but, apparently, Marmite is often used in the sauces served at Chinese restaurants in Malaysia. Spike was slo-mo gnashing over my Marmite pork ribs (£7, or large for £14) – four fat strips of meat, charred and nibbly at the outer edges and plastered with a Tarmac black sauce and a dusting of sesame seeds. I’m just glad they provided hand wipes.

Great, as were the addictive deep fried peanuts (£3.50) from the Bar Snacks section of the menu. With their brick red skins on, they were dusted in sparklingly hot Szechuan pepper and a pinch of chopped spring onions.

From the same list, I tried the pair of asparagus and bamboo shoot dumplings (£5.50), which were Eccles cake sized, pillow plump and marshmallow squishy, though slightly bland and dependant on a dunk into the vinegary soy dip on the side.

I’m a bit of a wuss when it comes to extreme heat, and the waiter had already warned me about their minced pork and chicken jungle curry (£6 or £12), so I swerved that challenge.

However, there was plenty of Bunsen burner spice in the innocent sounding green mango, cucumber and cashew nut salad (£5 or £10). In a huge heap, it featured wet plaits of tangy and zingy fruit, topped with crumbled nuts, tiny shrimp, fish sauce, lime juice, and crescents, like baby’s fingernails, of red hot chilli.

Thankfully, my burnished maw was cooled by the communion wafers of rice flour dusted daikon that came alongside the sea trout laab option (£6, or £12). It didn’t feature the minced meat that is usual for this dish. Instead, there were chunks of pink fish, along with red onion, dill, eau de lemongrass, more chilli and some curls of crispy fish skin.

I didn’t really need the side of sticky rice (£2.50) that I’d ordered to go alongside all these goodies, though it was so gorgeously glutinous that I wanted to scoop it out of the pot and mould it into something, as if I was in the video for Lionel Richie’s Hello.

Anyway, nothing beats escaping the sun for some vibrant food in a venue that’s cool, in both senses of the word.

Tap on, tea in, that’s how I like it.

There were chunks of pink fish, along with red onion, dill and more chilli