We had the chance to spend four quick days traveling through Scotland. We spent time in the cities of Glasgow, Stirling, and Edinburgh. At the beginning of this trip, we were getting to that point on our trip where we are kind of sick of eating out. While eating out and on the go most foods are heavier, fried, less vegetables, bigger portions, and not always how you like it. Mostly it’s been great, but maybe you can relate to the feeling of just wanting a home-cooked meal. We are missing the kitchen! With that said, I think that heavily influenced how we ate in Scotland. We were looking for foods we hadn’t eaten since being on our trip to switch things up. With that, here are my top five things we ate on our trip, which all happen to be in Edinburgh!
1. JOELATO
As part of our trip to Edinburgh we did a “Food Safari”! It was certainly a highlight of our trip, that I would recommend to any foodie! 3/5 favorites we part of our tour, starting with the showstopper Joelato. Joe was a guy who loved good ice cream, well he decided to up his love and hobby of ice cream making by going to Gelato University in Italy! (Olivia and I’s dream, I officially think we MUST do it.) He then came back and opened a simple but delicious gelato shop.
Every flavor spoke to me: browned butter, honeycomb, salted dark chocolate, salted pistachio, and raspberry something. Every flavor I sampled was delicious and deciding on one flavor (only one included on the tour) was nearly impossible. I ended up with the honeycomb which was a creamy base with a honeycomb-y swirl- so yummy. Olivia had the browned butter, and it was rich and magical, both simple and delicious. We loved it so much we were going to go back at the end of our food safari, but we were simply too stuffed. I was very sad to be so rational. I am sad there is no Joelato in London, we would be there often!
2. THE BAILIE BAR
The Bailie is a traditional Scottish pub. The Bailie Bar has been around since the 1870s! Here we enjoyed a deliciously modern take on haggis. I wrote more about what haggis is and eating this haggis in this post. If you want to try haggis, I recommend it be this one. The mash was also delicious and buttery, and the peppercorn sauce was vibrant. We didn’t try anything else, but the other menu items being enjoyed by other guests looked tasty! A great spot for some classic pub dishes and a drink if you’re into that! Bonus, the service was excellent, and the manager was very kind!
3. NOK'S KITCHEN ON THE CASTLE
We have not had Thai food in forever. This day we were walking the royal mile, a very touristy street leading up to Edinburgh Castle. The food was very fresh and delicious Thai food, that we really enjoyed! It was quite expensive for what you got (almost 15 pounds)- not really enough food for two people if you are hungry and you had to pay for rice separately if you got curry, which I find extremely annoying. Give me the dang rice as part of the meal. Anywho, so if you find yourself with a Thai hankering or wanting to eat something different than all your other meals, this meal was tasty and enjoyable, just pricey- but it is also in the heart of tourism, sooooo c’est la vie.
4. TIGER LILY
This was another stop on our food-tasting tour. It is a restaurant and boutique hotel, but a popular place for fun drinks and a fun vibe. We had a magical mocktail experience. Pouring a sparkly juice blend over cotton candy and an edible flower- such a fun experience! We also had a few tasty bites, including a smoked salmon with whipped cream cheese on a cracker bite- classic and fresh. We also had sweet potato bhajis, which are tasty sweet potato fritters; I think they could be fun to recreate and serve with a variety of dipping sauces! Overall, we only had a few small bites, but they were tasty and fun and left me wanting to try more from them.
5. EL CARTEL TACOS
To follow along with our theme of needing different food than we have been eating, we got ourselves some tacos. The menu here consists of smaller tapas and street tacos. The servings were small, but the flavors were big! The food was delicious. The carnitas and Baja fish tacos were my very favorite, but everything we tried was delicious. It was so nice to eat some Mexican food (the one major thing Europe is lacking) that was full of flavor and very vibrant! The items are not that expensive, but you need multiple entrees before you’re full, so keep that in mind! You also walk up a massive flight of stairs to get there (at least where we came from) so keep that in mind! Scotland really is a bunch of hills! (Good for the legs and digestion, not always good for morale.)
Overall, I was really surprised to see so much good food in Edinburgh. Scotland is a beautiful country and has some great food tucked throughout as well!
Cheers!
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