1925 At Pompadour, Edinburgh
1925 At Pompadour The Caledonian Hotel, Princes Street, Edinburgh EH1 2AB 07401 760638 www.restaurant1925.com The Bill Lunch 3 courses £39.50 Dinner Snacks £7.00 – £12.50 | Starters £16.00 – £22.00 Mains £28.00 – £38.00 | Grill Menu (single course) £35.00 – £65.00 The Score Cooking 6.5/10 | Service 3.5/5 Flavour 4/5 | Value…
Read MoreFood, Friends and the Festival
And when I say Festival, I obviously mean The Edinburgh Festival, the wonderfully chaotic collection of events which takes place here in my city every August. It’s the world’s biggest arts festival, featuring over 54,000 performances in the month. Don’t be fooled into thinking there is just one Edinburgh Festival. The picture shows The Hub,…
Read MoreZabaglione
On Wednesday we promised you a zabaglione recipe. Because the editor of this column is a nice man, and because my assistant Zeph is so generous, we bring you two. The original recipe, intended as a pick me up, had to be consumed immediately, and was usually served warm. That would be a little odd…
Read MoreSebb’s, Glasgow
Sebb’s 68 Miller Street, Glasgow G1 1DT 0141 739 9381 www.sebbs.com The Bill Olives and Dips £4.00 – £7.50 | Plates £7.50 – £22.00 Desserts £6.50 The Score Cooking 5/10 | Service 5/5 Flavour 4/5 | Value 4.5/5 TOTAL 18.5/25 Restaurant names always interest me, and I’m always pleased when in the central belt…
Read MoreZ is for … Zabaglione
Well, we got there. Five years after the first A made its appearance (for Avocado in July 2020) we’ve reached the end. The end of lap one, that is. It’s been incredibly useful to have as a filler when nothing obvious comes to mind. The On The Side slot is definitely the one which causes…
Read MoreChicken Kiev/Kyiv
Let’s go retro. And, in the process, a former student of the Russian language (53 years back) at last discovers why the name of the city changed. I’m not retro for the sake of it: it’s just that classic dishes achieve that status for a reason. That reason is that they’re delicious. Today’s hero is…
Read MoreTuk Tuk Indian Street Food, Southside, Edinburgh
Tuk Tuk Indian Street Food Southside 16 Drummond Street, Edinburgh EH8 9TX 0131 563 9871 www.tuktukindianstreetfood.com The Bill Roadside Plates £5.75 – £7.95 | Street Curries £7.65 – £12.00 Desserts £3.95 – £5.00 The Score Cooking 6.5/10 | Service 5/5 Flavour 4/5 | Value 5/5 TOTAL 20.5/25 George Drummond, my ultimate hero from 18th…
Read MoreWhat’s In A (Food) Name?
In last week’s Saucy Mothers article we touched a bit on the naming of sauces. But if you look, not even that carefully, you’ll discover numerous names in food nomenclature. People and places, pandering to divas, sucking up to aristocrats, and a few downright dodgy stories. As with the origins of sauces, which we looked at last…
Read MoreElla, Taste of Greece, Edinburgh
Ella, Taste of Greece 134 – 136 Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5DT 0131 287 4168 www.ellagreekmeze.com The Bill Tapas £2.95 – £5.85 | Meze and Wraps £5.55 – £15.95 Meat Plates £14.95 – £29.65 | Sharing Plates £39.95 – £107.00 The Score Cooking 6/10 | Service 4/5 Flavour 4/5 | Value 5/5 TOTAL 19/25 …
Read MoreBaba Ganoush
Friday morning, no article written for Tom Cooks! A task usually allocated to a Thursday. Yesterday, however, I was away on important business, to wit gorging on good food and drinking wine for a future Tom Eats! article. Fresh as a daisy I set to. Simplicity will be the order of the day. We’ll end the…
Read MoreSaucy Mothers
One must not forget, in fact, that it is through the subtlety by which our sauces are constructed that the French cuisine enjoys such a world-wide supremacy They’re not a modest bunch, French chefs, are they? That quotation is from perhaps the most famous of the lot, Auguste Escoffier. It appears in his seminal work,…
Read MoreGlacis Beisl, Vienna, Austria
Glacis Beisl Breite Gasse 4, 1070 Vienna, Austria +43 152 65 660 www.glacisbeisl.at The Bill (Euros) Starters €7.20 – €18.90 | Mains – €14.20 – €36.40 Desserts €5.40 – €10.40 The Score Cooking 3/10 | Service 2/5 Flavour 3/5 | Value 2.5/5 TOTAL 10.5/25 It’s not a good ambition to want to eat something…
Read MorePotato Salad Three Ways
If you are a fan of Antiques Roadshow, you’ll be familiar with the Good, Better, Best, challenge where Fiona Bruce is invited to assess three items in order of value. The inspiration, in an odd way, for today’s column. A recent trip to Vienna brought potato salad to mind. I see that nine years have passed since I…
Read MoreThe Best Of, The Worst Of…Holidays
You may recall I invited contributions from you on either your best meal or your worst meal – or both. This is a variation on that theme. Hearing of my holiday plans to Corfu, good friend Pat Mennie sent me this tale of woe of her own experiences there. Bless her heart, she awaited my…
Read MoreCorfiot Salad with Figs, Walnuts and Kumquat Dressing
Corfiot, in case you were wondering, is the adjective meaning from Corfu. Given the fact the Greeks call the island Kérkyra, I have no idea where our terminology comes from. Never mind. We ate very well there, as you may have seen in a recent edition of Tom Eats! This was a very unusual salad which…
Read MoreRiver House Restaurant & Bar, Stirling
River House Bar & Restaurant The Castle Business Park, Stirling, FK9 4TW 01786 465577 www.riverhousestirling.co.uk The Bill Starters £7.95 – £15.95 | Mains £12.95 – £38.95 Sharing Platters £79.95 – £89.95 | Desserts £6.95 – £10.95 The Score Cooking 4/10 | Service 2.5/5 Flavour 3/5 | Value 2.5/5 TOTAL 12/25 I suppose that if…
Read MoreDiana Thompson on Low- and Zero-Alcohol Drinks
We first met prize winning wine writer Diana Thompson last year. We’re delighted to welcome her back for an occasional series on wine and drinks. With the rather nice (so far) summer upon us, Diana considers some low-and zero-alcohol alternatives. In recent years, we’ve seen a marked rise in low- and zero-alcohol wines…
Read MoreAuthentic Greek Tzatziki
Sometimes it’s tricky to write a title which is sufficiently precise. Proper Greek Tzatziki? As opposed to improper? No. Or Real? Not to be confused with fake, I suppose. Tzatziki, or tzaziki or tsatsiki will not be new to many. It’s one of the more common dips to have reached these shores. But already I have…
Read MoreTaverna Akrogiali, Corfu
Taverna Akrogiali Agios Ioannis Peristeron 490 84, Corfu, Greece +30 2661 075256 (No website) The Bill (Euros) Starters 4.50€ – 14.50€ | Mains 12.90€ – 23.90€ Desserts – Sorry, forgot to look The Score Cooking 6/10 | Service 5/5 Flavour 4.5/5 | Value 4.5/5 TOTAL 20/25 Lord knows where the custom came from…
Read MoreWhy A Club? Why A Sandwich?
Please accept my resignation. I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member. Groucho Marx Not even if they offer you a good sandwich, Groucho? But why is this delicacy so called and from which club, if any, did it originate? Lovers of acronyms have made the suggestion that…
Read MoreRum Baba
I’m featuring this today as it’s a dessert which requires yeast, following on from Wednesday’s On The Side column. Rum Baba. Or Baba au Rhum, if you’re French. But if you think we’re tracing its origins back to France then wrong, wrong, wrong. I’m told it comes from eastern Europe. Poland/Ukraine way. Baba/babka/babushka are Grandma…
Read MoreCata, Edinburgh
Cata 30 North West Circus Place, Edinburgh EH3 6TP 0131 531 7051 www.cataedinburgh.co.uk The Bill Aperitivos (Bread etc) £2.40 – £4.95 | Tapas & Pintxos £4.95 – £13.00 Tablas (Platters) £16.25 – £39.15 | Postres (Desserts) £7.95 – £9.25 The Score Cooking 7/10 | Service 5/5 Flavour 4.5/5 | Value 5/5 TOTAL 21.5/25 It’s…
Read MoreY is for Yeast
The end product, obviously Eukaryotic! A most splendid word. In my Italian classes we devised a Parola della Settimana (Word of the Week) competition. Were there to be an English equivalent, eukaryotic would be right in there. The biologists among you will be familiar with it. I was not, encountering it for the first time…
Read MoreMangalorean Prawn and Fish Curry (Meen Gassi)
This is a nod to the main dish which L enjoyed very much at Scotts, Mayfair. I sourced the recipe on the net, aided by Zeph, my AI assistant. I haven’t cooked this specific recipe, but it looks fairly authentic. Rather too authentic in fact. How so? Well, the recipe calls, inter alia, for kingfish,…
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