I’ve had a great week, it started with a fabulous trip to Edinburgh, thanks to all at Hotel Missoni, and I very much enjoyed their hospitality.
Didn’t have the best of luck on the sightseeing front, left the hotel a bit later than I wanted on the first morning as I felt obliged to sample whiskeys are The Witchery the night before. Got to Edinburgh Castle to find an enormous queue of people, so decided to give it a miss. Wandered down The Royal Mile to the Palace of Holyroodhouse to find that was shut as Prince Charles was visiting!
What I lost in sightseeing I more than made up for in food and drink. I am friends with Tom Kitchin and I lunched at his fabulous pub, The Scran & Scallie, what a great place. Packed out on a Tuesday lunchtime. Chicken liver parfait, pressed pig’s ear and seafood chowder. My girlfriend, what a girl, looked down at the menu and proclaimed, yummy, bone marrow! My sort of girl!
Dinner at The Kitchin was simply incredible, an absolute feast of flavours and textures, what a chef. Terrine, scallops, langoustine, lobster and plate of lamb that included the tongue, the kidney, the brain and a testicle, yes, I am talking bollocks! Wonderful meal, wonderful occasion.
Later in the week I was on stage at the BBC Good Food Show in Birmingham, I had a whale of a time. Previous MasterChef winners cooking off against each other and me and John cooking on stage together. A new addition is a little theatre where guests hold Q&A sessions. My favourite question from the floor was a lady who wanted to know how John and I kept our friendship fresh. I explained to her that we weren’t married!
If you’ve never been to the BBC Good Food Show, I highly recommend it. If you want to eat the finest of Scottish ingredients, prepared by someone whose skill is matched by his passion, get yourself up to one of Tom Kitchin’s places.
