Joanna Blythman restaurant review: Locavore, 349 Victoria Road, Glasgow

Food rating 8½/10

Even though the world is in the grip of lunatic politicians and seemingly on a path to irreversible environmental destruction, we can still take delight in Locavore, the new, marvellously affordable social enterprise supermarket that’s sprouted up in Glasgow’s happening Govanhill.

I say new, but plucky Locavore has been around for a bit, setting up growing plots around the city, delivering organic veggie boxes, supply food assemblies, nurturing the green shoots of Scotland’s progressive local food movement. But heavens, was anyone prepared for the before and after as it emerged like a beautiful butterfly from its chrysalis, breaking out of its dark, trapped premises in Strathbungo to re-appear big, beautiful and triumphant on Victoria Road? No apologies if this sounds gushing. I want to award everyone connected with Locavore (quite a band now) the ecological equivalent of a gold medal, or failing that a massive hug and heartfelt "thank you" for their vision and optimism, for being such a persuasive showcase for an alternative, wholly appetising, sane food system that might just save us from ourselves.

So get along there to revel in the properly fresh, locally grown, and therefore seasonal, produce, to fill up your reusable glass bottle from the stylish dispenser from which flows unhomogenised organic milk from Ayrshire cows. Take along every bit of reusable packaging you’ve acquired and fill it from Locavore’s self-service dispensers, which are loaded up with a comprehensive, cosmopolitan range of culinary necessities.

Lunch on the spot? Even better. The cafe has the eclectic shop as its larder, an edible and commercial synergy. It isn’t at the mercy of suppliers; Locavore is its own supplier.

So here’s our first dish, beans on toast as you’ve never known it, two doorstopper-thick slices of Freedom Bakery (it trains prisoners to bake) sourdough heaped with at least four different sorts of legumes – black badger peas, red fox peas, fava beans, red kidney beans – that have clearly been soaked then boiled not merely decanted from a tin, in a fiery, spicy tomato sauce with a tang like tamarind, a splosh of yogurt and handful of raw sprouts on top. You’re looking a £4.50 for this filling plateful of ethical, thoughtfully sourced food. You can buy the oregano that’s bursting out from Locavore’s "almost zero food miles" plots or taste it in a mug of soup (£1.50) where roasted, meaty aubergines bring mouth-filling volume to herby tomato soup. Today’s omnivore platter (£8.50) is easily enough for two people. Pumpernickel bread, juicy hand-carved slices of smoked ham from Peelham Farm in Berwickshire, thick wedges of the stupendous new Rainton Tomme and Fleetwood Blue cheese from the Ethical Dairy in Gatehouse of Fleet, small ramekins filled with homemade roasted hazelnut butter (sensational!), bean paté, and a blush-pink rhubarb chutney, quartered boiled egg with an intensely yellow yolk from its grass-fed diet, new potato salad, marinated mushrooms and courgettes, green olives; all organic.

We’ve ordered too much, a tad repetitiously, yet we have no problem polishing off the sandwich of the day: Freedom Bakery sourdough, more of that great ham, sprouted seeds, a fistful of spiky-edged, watercress-like leaves that it would take a forager to identify, and terrific piccalilli, the latter a winning example of how no fresh fruit or veg gets wasted at Locavore but repurposed in the kitchen.

As usual I avoid the vegan cakes; I won’t eat margarine and I love eggs. But there’s ample consolation in the non-vegan banana cake. It has the consistency of bread pudding, and the dark, fermented taste of cocoa nibs, which have softened as baked, stands up to the acetone aroma of the ripe banana. The hazelnuts in the brownie speak louder than the sugar.

And if the food isn’t enough to make you smile, the place itself will: green floor, sunflower yellow walls, orange blossom perfuming the air, tomato and bean plants in reused olive oil tins growing up jute strings in the sunny window, staff – paid a living wage – whose positivity shines out. Locavore is the future. We can’t afford NOT to shop and eat there.