Scottish cuisine is horribly undersold. Mis-sold. As in, the French waiter at this awesome Edinburgh restaurant who described the “lamb nose to tail” as something like “all the horrible bits”. You probably don’t want it, nuh uh, no way, no how. Which is true, if you think about it – offal does not make for a great marketing strategy.
Bars
The cheeseburger looked good too, the carpaccio was excellent, the spinach/ricotta ravioli got a good bread mopping up
Time for a blatant plug for my friend Shep’s bar in Paris. Billing itself as “the only Scottish owned Scottish bar in Paris” or somesuch, it really does not matter – it’s a good bar, with a great bartender and a phenomenal selection of whiskeys.
Jan 122011
This is a short attempt to create a list of things to check out if you’re visiting / moving to Paris. It’s not a definitive or complete list by far, nor do I make any claim to describe secret, hip, “in” things. It is a work in progress, and I’ll add/edit things as I think of them — suggestions are welcome.
Tosca’s probably my favorite bar in the whole world. It’s dark, only occasionally infested by bankers (avoid around 5pm on weekdays), has decent drinks, and lets you play Italian opera on the jukebox.
Europe has a dearth of bars. Real bars, not either cafés or that noisy in-crowd shit where the ambient racket would drown out a marine diesel.
My grandfather introduced me to Harry’s, when he visited Europe for the last time to help me celebrate my escape from business school. He didn’t walk so well anymore, at age 96, but well enough for me to drag him (him to drag me?) to some choice representatives of the awesome collection of bars that [...]
Tagged with: Awesome cocktails, Cozy, Traditional
Jul 292007
I always appreciate it when kind-of-scummy parts of town go upmarket; gentrification yay. So it is with Zurich’s Kreis 4, which used to be full of hookers, drug dealers and drunks. It still is, but the grimy Langstrasse, in addition to having the best kebabs (New Point) in town — tip to the owners: ditch [...]
Tagged with: Hep Cats, Innovative
Milion spreads across three floors, the garden and the terrace of a somewhat palatial residence dating from 1913. From what I read, the two kids who inherited it, penniless, decided in 1999 to turn it into a hip bar & restaurant, and did a pretty good job at it. And after driving past the closed-even-though-it-said-open-online [...]
Tagged with: Hep Cats
