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September 24, 2015
East meets Mexico at Bo Kantina.
East meets Mexico at Bo Kantina.

Last week, the 5pm Dining blog found itself sashaying down West Regent Street so we dropped into the recently opened Bo Kantina.

Regular readers with too much time on their hands may recall that we wrote about them when they launched in August.

Korean and Mexican

Here’s a quick recap. Bo is a Korean/Mexican fusion restaurant which opened in the former Burger Meats Bun premises.

Bo is from Ben Dantzic and James Forrest, the team who set up the BMB restaurants in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

We had a chat with Ben about Bo and how the Korean Mexican mix came about.

‘The Korean Mexican combination is not as odd as people imagine,’ laughs Ben. ‘The menu is very much east Asian and Korean at its core. The Mexican influences are more about the way the dishes are served and presented. So we have tacos filled with spiced chicken and a peanut dressing or tortillas stuffed with bulgogi pork.

Next step in street food

‘We really like what David Chang did with places like Momofuku in New York – that idea of updating Asian food or presenting it differently. We are not pretending that we do authentic, traditional Korean food. What we are trying to do is the next step in street food. We did some research in London and Korean places are taking off as are a few places which do Korean with a Mexican twist. We took that idea, made it our own and adapted it for the Scottish market.’

Do something fresh

One of the reasons for closing Glasgow’s Burger Meats Bun and replacing it with Bo Kantina is that Ben felt ‘the burger scene in Glasgow city centre was getting stale’ so it was time to do something fresh.

Not that Ben is turning his back on the burger. He is not dropping any hints as to where the new Glasgow BMB might be but promises that the new venture will be bigger and better.