Stories of eating: eating in Edinburgh

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Ha… I call it ‘stories of eating’ --- it just shows how much I love to eat! :))

I love Edinburgh -- the hills, the ‘layers’ of the ground, the narrow streets, the ‘gray...ish’ and ‘dark’ creamy coloured ‘terraced’ buildings, yet little bright colourful ‘dots’ here and there give the historical bricks some joyful Ornaments.

It is actually strange, normally it is the colourful Mediterranean house which drive my dreams. I have never been a big fan of dark and plain buildings, but in Edinburgh, walking in between the buildings those are standing by the sides of the streets always surprise me, the detailed corner design, the material or the colour… I just like walking among them, looking at them, climbing up and down the narrow stairs between them…

Almost everywhere we go if we are staying for a few days, I would look for two things if I could find, one is featured local food,
another is white rice in Chinese or oriental food. So this time, we got both in this ‘international’ city.

I always think local food presents the local culture, so food is definitely a good way of getting to know the culture. For example, in northeast China, the food is very ‘straight forward’, no much complicated ‘process’, no need to take very long time to make, and the portion is very generous. So they say northeast Chinese are very direct, speak their mind, and generous -- of course, it is a generalized saying, but has its ‘logic’, don’t you think? :))

Anyway, since we are in Scotland, we already know that there are at least two kinds of food we can not miss -- scottish salmon and Scottish beef burger. I forgot to take photo of the salmon dish I had, (salmon cake,) it was beautifully presented -- layers of vegetables, fish cake… The big surprise is that it came with wasabi sauce at the bottom!! … Yes, wasabi with salmon fish cake. I have never really tried wasabi with well cooked ‘fish’, and here, not only just fish, but fish cake! However, the combination in mouth is not bad, a bit strange to me, as in Northeast China, we always have wasabi with fresh seafood, but this one is not bad at all. --- A little nice surprise.

As for the burger, the classic beef burger without cheese or any other radish -- I just love that smell of the burger -- a little ‘burn’ on the grill. I had a big portion! :)) -- Ha, if you saw me there, I bet you are very confused if this is the person who actually does not like meat. The truth is I can never miss a real ‘Scottish burger’. :))

Continuously having ‘western’ food for a few days, I always look for a little oriental treat. What a globalized world! I had Japanese Ramin in a Chinese restaurant, and had Korean stone bowl rice in a Japanese restaurant! :) :) It sounds funny, did I really have any real authentic food at all? I actually preferred the Japanese restaurant this time, the food we had was fresh and light, almost without oil at all, even the Korean stone bowl rice had a touch of Japanese food’s signature… but for stir-fried dish, I still need to keep on looking… :)))