Life & Style, Eat

New venue brings downtown New York to Edinburgh

19 Nov 2008

Edinburgh’s art scene has another new addition. The Bowery on Roxburgh Place in the Southside, opened last Saturday and takes its name from one of the famous city's hippest streets. The venue aims to replicate the quirky and semi mod attitude of the…

Bella Mbriana - restaurant review

20 Sep 2007

There are, probably, too many Italian restaurants around. Don’t take this the wrong way: Italian cuisine and, perhaps more importantly, the Italian attitude to food, bows to no-one on earth. Yet a month hardly passes without the appearance of another…

La Vallée Blanche

27 Mar 2008

When rationalising business-speak began to creep into the way things were run at étain restaurant in Princes Square a couple of years back, chef Neil Clark knew it was time to pack up his pans. Not one to compromise on his creativity, he left the…

Nanakusa

28 Feb 2008

There’s no such thing as a Japanese restaurant. So David Wan concluded during a fact-finding mission to the Far East last year – just as he was planning to open up such an establishment in Glasgow. There was no shortage of specialist bars selling sushi…

Eat - No 1 Sushi Bar

17 Jan 2008

THE MEAL Stories of fine Scottish wild salmon being caught, frozen and flown to high end restaurants in Japan are closer to the truth than you might think. Why then does sushi remain such niche cuisine in this country? In Scotland, Japanese…

Taste Test - Take-away margherita pizzas

19 Jun 2008

The Italian Kitchen •••• 64 Ingram Street, Glasgow, 0141 572 1472, www.italian-kitchen.co.uk Takeaway only. Pizza Margherita £6.95 Pizza is a simple thing, so getting the basics right is important. This one has a nicely chewy but crusty thin base…

Taste Test - White beers

13 Nov 2008

Black Isle Organic Wheat Beer, Colomba, Grolsch Weizen, Konig Ludwig, Hefe Weizen, Weihenstephaner Dunkelweiss

Calistoga Central

13 Nov 2008

The first hurdle to clear is that this is an American restaurant that doesn’t serve burgers. The best explanation of this is that it’s not an American restaurant but Californian. Calistoga has been around in Edinburgh since 2004 on St Leonards Street…

Eat, drink and be merry: Christmas food

13 Nov 2008

‘Christmas dinner on a budget is easy, and you don’t have to end up with a can of Spam and a tub of out-of-date potato salad, either. It should be a special meal; it should feel special, and the secret to that is really simple – get a table set…

Taste test - Chicken Tikka Masala

30 Oct 2008

McLeish Brothers, Lidl, Mother India, Tesco, Caledonian Curry Company, Marks & Spencer

Taste Test - Chicken sandwiches

22 May 2008

Fresssh 51–53 Cochrane Street, Glasgow, £2.80 •• Sweet chilli sauce gives this sandwich a bit of oomph – something it probably needed given the bland cubed chicken and plain bread. The fire in the chilli is under control, which is probably sensible…

A bluffer’s guide to Thanksgiving

13 Nov 2008

Call it the Americanisation of Britain, call it another excuse for a slap up meal, but Thanksgiving has grown in popularity. Celebrated on the last Thursday of November, it’s akin to a grown up Christmas without the gift buying or wrestling with…

Christmas meal

16 Oct 2008

Let’s face it, someone’s got to book the office Christmas meal. Lots of brownie points if you get it right. Lots of reindeer manure if you get it wrong. The place Try to find a restaurant with a private room or a private area. A large party can…

Cocktail kudos

17 Jul 2008

Shervene Shahbazkhani recently won the Scottish heats of the 42 Below Cocktail World Cup in Edinburgh with her innovative cocktail, ‘Bring the Beat Back’. She describes how she made it; ‘I tend to follow what my instincts tell me to make. Most cocktails…

Take Three: They were once a Pierre Victoire

5 Jun 2008

Howies 10 Victoria Street, Edinburgh, 0131 225 1721 www.howies.uk.com There’s no question the original PV was in a great restaurant spot: right in the heart of town on one of Edinburgh’s most interesting streets. Howies’ casual, populist style…

Wedgwood the Restaurant - review

13 Dec 2007

Edinburgh is a tourist city, and for restaurants that’s both a blessing and a curse. Tourists are hundreds of thousands of extra diners appearing at their collective door each year; look too closely to them, however, and you’ll be disparaged for…

Two Fat Ladies at the Buttery - review

29 Nov 2007

When you see the word ‘at’ (or the symbol ‘@’) in a restaurant name there’s always a bit of a suspicion that it’s something of a forced marriage. Like a double A-side or joint top billing it’s a rather clunky effort to tempt the public into believing…

Side Dishes

30 Oct 2008

● Agua Restaurant has been re-launched with a seafood theme under head chef John-Paul Persighetti. For anyone tracking the oyster index, six west coast bivalves are doing well at £9.50. Prawns, mussels, cockles and crab also feature at the new crustacea…

Cail Bruich West

Gael force

4 Sep 2008

No one quite expected the Gaelic renaissance to include food. Fiona Anderson took along her phrasebook for a meal in Glasgow's West End.

Taste Test - Chocolate Ice Cream

4 Sep 2008

Häagen-Dazs Belgian Chocolate, £2 for 100ml tub This surprised a few in the blind tasting, who were expecting something more artificial from this worldwide brand. In fact, the silky texture, rich taste and genuine chocolate flavour were fairly…

Cafézique

19 Jun 2008

If a deli is trying to tempt you to spend a bit more than you might at a supermarket on the basis that their food is better selected, in better condition and better quality, then you’d fully expect a partner café alongside to be operating under similar…

Food For Thought: Jonathan Wilkes

22 May 2008

My eating routine when I’m working is shocking. When I’m on tour, I grab what I can when I can. For breakfast I’ll have a bacon sandwich, followed by a club sandwich for lunch , so it’s bread after bread after bread. As much as I love my bread there’s…

Taste Test - Cereal snack bars

10 Apr 2008

Gillian McKeith's Living Food Energy Bar (Soil Association approved) 70g/£1.59 (•) Yikes. An ‘organic superfood bar’ that smells of wicker chairs and is definitely the least tasty on test. It even looks unappetising. It has a fruity, malty, heavy…

Roseleaf - Upbeat pub grub

15 Nov 2007

There’s no doubt that the shake-up of pubs nearly two years on from the introduction of the smoking ban is well underway. Most of us have changed our attitudes to pubs in that time – we’ll go more often, but for a shorter time, we’re more likely to eat…

Aaloo Tikki aur Pudine ki Chutney

Potato cutlets with mint chutney

30 Oct 2008

This is Abhishek Bachchan's favourite dish, and it's very popular with the whole family. Across India, there are variations on the stuffing, from mashed peas to spice blends, but the Bachchans prefer it simple and don't stuff theirs. Mint chutney is…

Food for thought

Hardeep Singh Kohli

30 Oct 2008

Food's a very important part of my life. I can't begin to tell you how much. I'm notoriously bad at eating breakfast, yet ironically I'm obsessed with it, to the extent that my next book is going to be about breakfast. I will have a decent lunch, and…

Screen bites

30 Oct 2008

When a 1970s Indian journalist labelled populist Bollywood films as 'masala movies' - a dollop of drama, pinch of comedy, stirred in with some song and dance - Indian cinema's association with food became firmly established. While the masala movies…

Take three: Cinematastic cafés

30 Oct 2008

Café Royal Oyster Bar 17a West Register Street, Edinburgh, 0131 556 4124 This venerable Victorian fish restaurant tucked off Princes Street appeared in the 1981 Oscar-winning Chariots of Fire, although despite the movie's Scottish connections it…

The Bollywood Lounge & Indian Restaurant

Movie smoothie

30 Oct 2008

The gaudy glamour of the Indian film industry seems a parallel universe away as you button up on a dreich Glasgow night and stride past Sauchiehall Street's greasy takeaways and booze-addled hordes down by Charing Cross. Yet, just on the other side of…

The Shandon Belles

What lies beneath

21 Aug 2008

The problem of second spaces is a dogged one for restaurants. A successful venue is always keen to make more tables available, but knows that the atmosphere, or the logistics, just don’t work so well in a room that’s tucked awkwardly through the back or…

Taste Test - Meat Pies

17 Jul 2008

Gregg’s Scotch Pie Gregg’s, various outlets, Scotland wide 70p We couldn’t do a meat pie test without saying ‘aye’ tae a pie – a traditional Scottish mutton pie, that is. The hot water crust pastry is crunchier and more robust than the flakier…

Chez Pierre

5 Jun 2008

Sometimes we get a bit too serious about food. But then it is a serious business, it’s what keeps us upright, but like any realm of human interest some folk, among them food journalists and chefs, become just a bit too earnest about the whole subject.

New Restaurant - Pani Solinska

24 Apr 2008

The bright idea. I was standing in the Kirkcaldy sunshine looking at an empty restaurant. I had been made redundant from my job after over 20 years and I felt a little at sea. Slowly the dawning of an old dream came to me. Why not now? A Polish…

Taste Test - Posh cheese and onion crisps

13 Mar 2008

Tyrells Mature Cheddar & Chives, 50g, 65p Kember & Jones, 134 Byres Road, Glasgow; Jenners, 48 Princes Street, Edinburgh The classy looking, see-through packaging looks promising, but these hand-cooked crisps are over fried and over flavoured. The…

The best chocolate for Valentine's Day

31 Jan 2008

Cocoa Mountain Balnakeil Craft Village, Durness, Sutherland, www.cocoamountain. co.uk, 01971 511233 ‘Summit Collection’ with 20 chocolates £19.50 Plain but neat cardboard box and dividers with a wholesome recycled feel. Classic dusky textured…

BBC Good Food Show in Scotland

1 Nov 2007

This has been the year of the food fair. Events organisers up and down Scotland have sniffed the air and have, in their droves, turned to food and drink as a way of celebrating local identity and drawing crowds young and old. Numerous towns around the…

Eat - Oysters

18 Oct 2007

It’s a homecoming, of sorts. The Loch Fyne Oyster Bar in Argyll is revered on the Scottish food scene, in modern times a place much more worthy of the ‘Rest and Be Thankful’ tag than the hill summit a few miles away. The chain of Loch Fyne Restaurants…

Drawing Room

6 Sep 2007

It used to be called the Brewery Tap, which was simple. Turn tap on, punters (students, largely) come to drink. Turn tap off, punters leave. Often shambolically. Now it’s Drawing Room, and a bit more complex. There are puns happening, because they…

Changing places

2 Oct 2008

When a restaurant location starts to see a few different tenants in a short span of time it gets a bit of a reputation. ‘Bad site,’ many will mutter. Not necessarily true, however. Of course some locations are harder work, but also in play are things…

Food for thought: Michael Caines

Chef and entrepreneur

2 Oct 2008

In the food trade we eat in a strange way. I don’t know any chef who’s a good eater when it comes to the discipline of eating: your work time is people’s mealtime.The biggest problem is that because you don’t remember sitting down to have a meal you…

Side dishes: News to nibble on

2 Oct 2008

Leven’s is the latest opening from Thai Lemongrass and Time 4 Thai operator Carole Tong, offering what’s described as ‘Thai Fusion Cuisine’ in a highly designed setting boasting moody purple lighting, sparkly wall paper and sleek wood. The menu is…

Taste test - Tea

2 Oct 2008

China Green Tea from Dragonfly Tea, Happiness Tea from Today Was Fun, Yunnan from Twinings Light Classics range, Yerba Maté from Mr Scruff’s Make Us a Brew Tea Company, Rose Tea from Brewhaha, White Tea from Tea Tree Tea

Taste Test - Carrots: Organic v Non-organic

18 Sep 2008

After potatoes, carrots are our most consumed vegetable; they are also a stalwart of the organic vegetable box scheme, so we decided to see what difference we could find locally available carrots. These ones came from a decent dedicated local…

Take three: Outposts of the Gaeltacht

4 Sep 2008

Three top restaurants with Gaelic names.

Hidden Lane Café-Gallery

14 Aug 2008

The Hidden Lane doesn’t do location, location, location. Start in the ramshackle stretch of Argyle Street between Finnieston and Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery where there’s a growing and diverse range of small, independent bars and dining spots…

Side Dishes

3 Jul 2008

Urban Angel has opened a second branch on Forth Street in the former Tapas Tree premises just off Broughton Street, Edinburgh. Compared to the Hanover Street original it’s open earlier (from 8am), has more space and is serving much the same local…

Taste Test - Yoghurts

3 Jul 2008

Yeo Valley •••• Organic Strawberry Probiotic Yoghurt, 49p From Somerset, Yeo are now one of the market leaders in organic yoghurts, delivering a noticeably creamy yet light, pleasant tasting product. The sweetness comes from the fruit, and while…

Taste Test - Smoothies

5 Jun 2008

Innocent Mango and Passion Fruit Smoothie ••• RS McColl, St James Centre, Edinburgh, £1.89 for 250ml Mango overload! A tangy, tropical taste is left in your mouth which could be quite refreshing on a hot day. It may be pure but you should expect a…

Dumb Waiter - A guide to food terminology

8 May 2008

brochette skewer think kebab, but not that kind of kebab. bruschetta Italian toast, served with olive oil and tomatoes (rather than marmalade). capon castrated cockerel. caponata a Sicilian speciality of aubergines with tomatoes, olives…

Earthy Food Store

8 May 2008

Despite the very best and utterly wholesome intentions to stock up on organic cheeses at the weekly farmers’ market, or to take a drive to the country to buy veg with the soil still hanging off it, sometimes a long lie or a busy week gets in the way.