Chiu on This

Vegetarians, avert your eyes (international edition)

Check out what's in the window of Oink, a small storefront in Edinburgh's Grassmarket.

The place seats about two people at a table in the front and three people at a counter in the back. Sitting at the counter and savoring a hog roast roll, I noticed plenty of passers-by stopping at the window and gawking, some with a look of disgust (vegetarians? carnivores who don't like to see what their food looks like before it gets to their plate?), others with the heavy-lidded eyes of a Homer Simpson thinking, "mmmm...pig...". And mmmmmm, pig, is the right response.

An appetizer

This man knew what he was doing.

More on my meal at Beijing Da Dong Roast Duck, coming soon.

The verdict

Of course I was going to try haggis. How could I be in Scotland and not have some? There it was, right in the hotel breakfast buffet, sitting next to some blood sausage. At least, I thought that was haggis. There was no label, so I was guessing that the fried textured patty was it (the blood sausage was a lot darker).

Haggis, according to Wikipedia, consists of sheep's heart, liver, and lungs minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and traditionally simmered in the animal's stomach. (Why did I think that it was cooked in the sheep's bladder? Much too small, now that I think of it...). I've had chicken hearts before and had no problem with them, other than with their chewy, almost jerky like texture and the odd association of eating, well, a heart. Lungs - I had no idea what that would taste like. Liver, though, I've had a bad history with. Foie gras is great, and some formulations of chopped chicken liver can be rather tasty, but for the most part, I can't stand the stuff. I can sense it from a mile away. My parents and grandma have tried to fool me on occasion into eating liver, but I can't abide it - the aroma, the texture, that specific peculiar flavor no matter what animal it's from - ech!

Going to the dogs

I got into Edinburgh proper last Monday around 8am. I only had four days in town, with an entire day devoted to a training by David Gurteen on implementing knowledge cafes, so I had to make the most of my brief vacation time. I hadn't done a whole lot of planning, however, apart from buying a ticket to a performance of John Cleese's Alimony Tour in Glasgow for that same evening, and a ticket to a National Theatre of Scotland production of Knives in Hens, a play I'd never seen or heard of before.

My room at the George Hotel wasn't going to be ready until 2:30pm, so I whiled away my time having breakfast at the hotel restaurant (I'll post something about my first encounter with haggis in a later blog), then puttered bleary-eyed around George Street and other parts of the New Town until noon.

Starting to feel a desperate need for caffeine, I was very grateful when David Griffiths from K3Cubed, which was hosting the training, suggested that we go to the nearby Wellington Coffee. Hearing that I was coming in from NYC for the training and never having been to Edinburgh before, David kindly offered to meet me before the training to give me some pointers on the city. We headed up to the Old Town after getting sufficiently fueled (tasty coffee, by the way), with me laboring to get up the steps and slopes - sure, I walk a lot in NYC, but for the most part it's flatland; Edinburgh's terrain, I'd soon find, was going to be a bit of a challenge. After providing me with a quick look about the Royal Mile, a tip on a good place to eat (to be covered in an upcoming post), much needed directions to the University of Edinburgh building for the next day's training, and answers to a random assortment of questions from me that hoped didn't come off as too touristy, David headed off and I started thinking about lunch.