Like discovering a sizeable hank of hair in the bathroom sink, there comes a time in every man’s life when his school is scheduled for demolition and the ticking of mortality’s timepiece grows fractionally louder.

Nothing indicates the Grim Reaper’s long, slow approach quite like an estate of shiny new Barratt houses on the very spot where once you swapped football cards and debated whether Squeeze were better than the Boomtown Rats.

Next year such will be the fate of Claremont high school, East Kilbride, alma mater of myself, Lorraine Kelly and a woman who once won something at the Olympics. These glorious exceptions notwithstanding, the demise of Claremont will mean the petrol stations and supermarkets of this fine new town will be obliged henceforth to source its staff from other schools. Claremont was never a classy facility.

I was talking, however, to a well-known upmarket Glasgow restaurateur and former Claremontian who revealed he’d been engaged to cater for the school’s farewell party. In my day, Claremont lunches were bovine nostril and cabbages. And now Claremont was to be dismantled to the cracking of crab claws and the supping of champagne. How did that happen? Further melancholy musings on the passage of time are prompted by those modern establishments that are neither pub nor restaurant but spaces where customers eat and drink pretty much as the fancy takes them, often accompanied by squealing children and glossy magazines.

These free-form, come-as-you-are establishments are on the rise, conditioned by gastro-pedantry, female affluence and the conviction that expensive wallpaper is of primary importance.

Often these places suffer from several drawbacks, usually that the kitchen has been installed in the cupboard where the mops used to be and that the cooks are sullen youths performing their community service. And the food has been salted heavily to encourage beverage consumption.

The Left Bank, however, seems to have been conceived the other way round: as a restaurant principally, but one where a certain proportion of the clientele lounge around on the perimeter, not eating. It is set among the curry houses of Gibson Street in a former bank now converted into a warren of nooks and mini-dining rooms in the modishly spare, exposed style, finished with wallpapers and light fittings from the interior design company Timorous Beasties, to render the place definitively modern urban.

It has a complex, multijointed menu designed to complement the flexi-time lifestyles of its patrons, with brunch, lunch, prix fixe, all-day mains and evening selections available, as well as a range dubbed “starters/smalls/sides”.

“Feel free to do the tapas thing,” says the menu, assuming customers know what this tapas thing may actually be.

The culinary waterfront is covered comprehensively, from high-spec organic vegetarian to sausages and bacon from Gillespie’s of Lanarkshire, but the menu is distinguished principally by the discrimination and specificity in the choice of ingredients, by a global pickiness and expertise. Mussels come in a rasam sauce, a deep-red, intensely spicy south Indian broth. New York meatballs come with gruyere and pickles, the mushrooms à la Grecque are slow-braised in sherry. There were mains of Provençal lamb steak with white bean purée and garlic-fried masala seafood curry with malabar squash and a fish chip pickle.

All of it was sizzlingly fresh, expertly cooked, prepared with a love of the produce and a profound allergy to culinary cliché. Portions were defeatingly large and the place was crammed to the rafters. Whatever hybrid form the Left Bank assumes or new social group it caters for, it’s doing it with a real passion and a convincing sure-footedness.

Rating: The Left Bank

Food 4/5
Atmosphere 4/5
Service 3/5
Value 4/5
Overall 4/5

The Left Bank, 33-35 Gibson Street, Glasgow, 0141 339 5969. Dinner for two with wine £45

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