Posts by Tom Johnston
Scoff by Pen Vogler – Book Review
SCOFF A History of Food and Class in Britain Pen Vogler Atlantic Books pp 470 £20 When I first heard about…
Read MoreCafe St Honoré At Home – Guest Reviewer Miranda Heggie
The Bill 4 courses for 2 with a bottle of wine £71.50 The Score Not applicable for takeaway food, but Miranda praised it to the skies and would have scored the food 10/10 (She clearly hasn’t read the scoring criteria recently – Ed) Finding a good restaurant that’s open on a Monday has always been…
Read MoreLesley Johnston’s Oatcakes
We’ll come to the main event in a minute. If you read Wednesday’s Chef Watch column featuring Neil Forbes, you would have seen reference to various dishes. One of these was his dad’s cassoulet. I kid you not, I had been planning on featuring a version of the classic bean stew this very day. Being…
Read MoreChef Watch – Neil Forbes, Cafe St Honoré, Edinburgh
CHEF WATCH Featuring Neil Forbes, Chef Director of Cafe St Honoré, Edinburgh How long have you been a chef? I have been a chef for roughly 35 years but if you included time at my parents’ and grandmother’s side cooking then I guess I have always been a cook. I recall the soup pot early…
Read MoreA Couple of Egg Dishes
As many of you know, I have a head full of trivia. So much so, I fear that most of the useful information I once had has been eased out to make way for increasing amounts of nonsense. In a culinary quiz I could have told you years ago the symbolism of the 100 folds…
Read MoreDine Murrayfield, Edinburgh
Dine Murrayfield 8 Murrayfield Place, Edinburgh EH12 6AA 0131 374 4800 www.murrayfield.scot The Bill Breakfast £2.50 – £9.00 Lunch & Dinner Starters £5.00 – £8.50 | Mains £10.00 – £17.50 | Puddings £7.00 – £8.00 The Score Cooking 6.5/10 | Service 4.5/5 | Flavour 4.5/5 | Value 5/5 Total 20.5/25 Regular readers of Tom’s…
Read MoreE is for….?
Hmm, I wonder what the E might possibly stand for in a food alphabet? For those who follow me on Twitter, I often have a teaser quiz a day or two before. Not this week. I did think about being really sneaky and featuring eel or éclair or endive, but you would probably have taken…
Read MoreFood Heritage Scotland – Introduced by Cat Thomson of The Scotsman
To celebrate the first birthday of Tom’s Food! next month I asked some food celebrities for contributions. The Scotsman newspaper has greatly expanded its food and drink section over the past few years. My only criticism of this is that for some odd reason, all the writers are female. The finest of these is Cat Thomson. She…
Read MoreTom’s Game Pie
After the festive season (such as it was this year) things tend to get a bit flat. It could be argued, therefore that this is not a time to be getting saucy. In the old Tom Cooks! column I did feature a game pie two or three years ago. This is a different version which…
Read MoreFin & Grape
Fin & Grape 19 Colinton Road, Edinburgh EH10 5DP 0131 452 8453 www.finandgrape.com The Bill Lunch Menu 3 courses for £15 (Small Plates) Larger Plates/Specials £11.00 – £22.00 The Score Cooking 6/10 | Service 4/5 | Flavour 4/5 | Value 5/5 Total 19/25 Back in the day when I used to be involved in the…
Read MoreImprove Your Cooking in 2021
There are of course many ways in which you can improve your culinary skills. Six months at the Cordon Bleu Cookery School will help. Or follow the lead of that lady in Julie and Julia, who set out to make every single dish in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. But let’s assume you lack the…
Read MoreTom Cooks! Top 5 of 2020
Tom’s Food! will be celebrating its first birthday in a few short weeks. Now if you feel you’ve been reading my reviews and recipes for a lot longer, worry not. You’re not in an early Alzheimer’s stage (just yet). The very first review was written in October 2014 and the first recipe just over…
Read MoreReview of the Year 2020: Part 2
This is the second part of the Tom Eats! review of 2020. The Top 12 scores feature below after a short, sombre musing. Those We Have Lost – and Gained There will be many lost. Especial favourites of Tom Eats!, The Wee Restaurant, Edinburgh and L’escargot blanc have both closed their doors…
Read MoreReview of the Year 2020: Part 1
2020 – Did Anything Happen? Oh, yes, The Great Plague. And The Great Miracle is that so many restaurants are still going despite a combination of Government capriciousness and ignorance in treating them in the same manner as traditional pubs. In Part 2 we’ll consider those whom we have lost and, remarkably, those…
Read MoreAlison Doody’s Light Christmas Cake
Star Baker Alison Read on before you write in to complain. I am aware that the traditionalists among you will have made your cake before the pandemic, and that you’ve been feeding it every week since. Well, best beloveds, the clue is in the title – Light. Sister in law Alison’s husband started to suffer from…
Read MoreMiranda Heggie’s Zoom Wine Tasting
For this, the last Tom Eats! of the year (apart from the annual review, which will be over two weeks on Wednesday 16 & 23 December) thanks are once again due to our glamorous and prolific guest reviewer, Miranda Heggie. Fancy a tutored wine tasting, but can’t buy alcohol out because of Tier 3?…
Read MoreThe Food Producers – Meet the Milnes, the Crafty Maltsters
Daniel, Norman and Alison Milne On a gloriously sunny November day I am on Demperston Farm, just outside Auchtermuchty in the Kingdom of Fife. The view is idyllic, looking south over the Lomond Hills. Alison Milne, however, is in reflective mode. As a society, we have never been more disconnected from our food and how…
Read MoreA Couple of Pheasant Stews
The game season is now in full swing. Probably my first exposure to game was in the form of pheasant, because that was the main thing shot at the in-laws in Perthshire. I’ve probably written before that the principal reason folk are leery of game is that they’re not sure what to do with it.…
Read MoreRollo Restaurant & Wine Bar, Stockbridge, Edinburgh
Rollo Restaurant & Wine Bar 108 Raeburn Place, Stockbridge, Edinburgh EH4 1HH 0131 332 1232 www.barrollo.com The Bill Bites £3.80 – £10.00 | Bowls £12.00 Plates £11.00 – £14.50 | Puddings £7.00 – £8.00 The Score Cooking 6.5/10 | Service 4.5/5 | Flavour 4.5/5 | Value 5/5 Total 20.5/25 It was a chance meeting…
Read MoreHungry by Grace Dent – Book Review
I wish back for just one normal evening. I was loved and I was never hungry, and for a small girl from Currock, that was as good as things get. We all know now that the small girl from Currock went on to do many more things. But until I read this, her autobiography, all I…
Read MoreOne20 Wine Cafe, Edinburgh
One20 Wine Cafe 120 Dundas Street, Edinburgh EH3 5DQ 0131 556 1911 www.one-20.co.uk The Bill Starters £4.75 – £13.50 | Mains £12.75 – £14.75 Dessert (Tiramisu) £4.75 The Score Cooking/Produce Selection 6.5/10 | Service 4.5/5 | Flavour 4.5/5 Value 4/5 Total 19.5/25 Has COVID made you less active? Have your mental facilities slowed as a…
Read MoreIn Praise of Mash
Now if you posed the question, mashed what, it proves how little you know me. In this divided age in which we live, a less magnanimous columnist might tell you to sling your hook: I, on the other hand, invite you to enter the fold and learn. The answer is, of course, potato. Yesterday was…
Read MoreChef Watch – Fred Berkmiller, L’escargot bleu
CHEF WATCH Featuring Fred Berkmiller, Chef Patron of L’escargot bleu, Broughton Street, Edinburgh How long have you been a chef? I started my apprenticeship at the age of 14, and took my first head chef job was when I was 23. Why did you become a chef? I didn’t really choose to, rather I was…
Read MoreMonkfish
Children are cruel beasts. Many believe that William Golding called it right in Lord of the Flies. The ugly and the different are not well treated and are often misunderstood. So pity the poor monkfish. You may never have seen one: the average fishmonger simply stocks fillets on his shelves. As you will observe from…
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