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March 24, 2009

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that these are not the happiest of times for restaurants. One of the latest to close its doors is the Grassroots Café in Glasgow. Just a few months short of the caff’s tenth birthday, the owners have posted a note on Grassroots’ website thanking customers for their business.

Specialising in organic and vegetarian food, it is probably fair to guess that there won’t be much of a crossover between the Grassroots café customers and the target market for the doner kebab flavour Pot Noodle which is being launched this coming weekend. According to a company spokesman, combining students’ two favourite post-pub meals was a no-brainer. Or rather, a ‘clash of the male food titans’.

Along with the rise in sales of fast food, some pundits have already linked the new flavour snack with the culinary dumbing down of Britain and reckon that it can only be bad news for the country’s restaurant trade. I think the opposite is true. Anyone who so much as gets a whiff of the doner Pot Noodle will be booking a table at their nearest neighbourhood restaurant as soon as they sober up enough to dial the number.

Not that there is anything wrong with a good kebab; it’s just that not all kebabs are born equal. For the real thing, try these 5pm members in Glasgow: 1 Bistro and its upstairs big brother Alla Turca, Charcoals and Koolba.