Okay so you may have noticed my absence from this site for a while. Okay, almost the whole month of August and now a lot of September. I have totally legitimate reasons I promise. The first is that I went on a work spree. The kind of holiday inducing deadline horror where you simply work all-the-time. Weekends. Evenings. Mornings. (Gasp!) I was trying to get as much done before I left for two weeks in Scotland. And I did okay. I read four books, including one, on Culinary Capital, where I had a bit of an ‘ah ha’ moment and *may* (and I say *may* very tentatively) have found a theoretical framework for my thesis. (Small dance.) Of course this now means I am ploughing my way very very slowly through Bourdieu. I also coded most of my field notes, only a few more to go, and most of my interviews. One more set left. I also transcribed all but one of my focus groups. (That last focus group threatened to throw me over the edge of madness so I’ve shelved it for a while.) So now I’m back and continuing to code and then I will be putting things into themes and then I will be writing. *Deep breath.*

But first, I wanted to share all the fantastic places I ate whilst in Scotland. Scotland has a bad reputation about food. For reasons I don’t really understand, when I mention eating and Scotland in the same sentence people inevitably talk about deep-fried Mars bars. Personally I’ve never had one although apparently they exist – just go into any chippy and ask for one. I’m not tempted enough though. I did some blog reading and review reading before I left so I knew about a few places – this is one of them, The Scran and Scallie.

The Scran and Scallie is Tom Kitchin’s new place and is located in Stockbridge, conveniently around the corner from our apartment. My mom and I had been wandering around the Water of Leith all morning, taking in the sights.

So we arrived without a reservation on a Tuesday lunch time and were shown to a table at once. It was reasonably full the whole time we were there and the staff were excellent. We shared the chicken liver parfait to start. The presentation was just adorable and the parfait itself smooth and delicious. We ate all the extra bread in our compulsion to eat all the parfait.

I had the hogget as a main, recommended by the waitress. The meat was succulent and tender, served with peas and lettuce. We also had a crunchy spelt salad and potatoes with chorizo. I honestly can’t remember what my mom ate.

We also managed dessert, although it may have been a step too far. It’s also one of the first times ever that I’ve had dessert envy. I had the cherry crumble and my mom had the strawberry jelly. Whilst the crumble was excellent, I couldn’t help feeling I’d lost out to her beautiful (and lighter) dessert. Next time I’ll have to have that.