Behind Glasgow’s Ka Pao and its Asian-inspired menu

Ka Pao is a much-loved food spot in Glasgow’s West End serving Asian inspired small plate dishes.

Transcript

00:00So Kapow has been open for four and a half years now in Glasgow, we opened up two and a half years

00:07ago in Edinburgh now. It's a concept that kind of started out about six, seven years ago we started

00:12doing pop-ups. It's very Southeast Asian influenced while trying to use as much of the Scottish

00:19larder as possible and yeah trying to keep the foods fun, playful and quite approachable for

00:27everyone else really. I mean yeah for us it's great, it's kind of the you know one of the best

00:31locations to be in in Glasgow. A lot of great restaurants around us, got Crab Shack just

00:38upstairs, Kalebrook around the corner, Bar Brett around the corner, you've got yeah a lot of people

00:44that really like to just go out and enjoy their food and you know it doesn't really matter what

00:47night of the week it is, you'll always kind of find the streets really busy and it's yeah a real

00:51kind of mix of people and cultures around too as well and a really good mix of mix of food as well

00:57which kind of makes it ideal. I've been fortunate enough to go out to Southeast Asia quite a few

01:01times for work and do a bit of work out there so you get to see a lot, taste a lot and experience

01:07a lot so always kind of like the identity and the objective was to try and bring some of that kind

01:13of experience and knowledge back and do food inspired by it, very kind of like influenced by

01:19it and kind of do it you know without you know we're not authentic we obviously never say we're

01:25authentic we can't really touch anywhere on it but we want to be you know giving respect to everything

01:30that we've learned out there as well so for us when we're writing a menu or doing a dish or

01:35anything like that we kind of want to go back to okay well we tried something out there and that's

01:39what it was like how could we say use some of the fresh you know fruit and veg that we get out here

01:44instead of you know importing it from over there and we also have to import certain things coconut

01:50lemongrass all the all the nice tropical ones but you know if we can get use the fresh fish and meat

01:56as well on top of that then for us it's hugely important to keep that identity so you know it's

02:03for better words it's almost fusion type and we try and stay away from that word as much

02:08as possible but to be honest with you yeah it's trying to marry marry Scotland with Southeast

02:14Asia as much as possible and finding the similarities is always kind of part of the fun

02:18as well make it a dish that is you know approachable for the Scottish palate as much as possible.