Adam's Stag and the Albanach Bar

July 21st.

Uncle David, Father Derek, Brother Ian

Scotland; allegedly the home of the brave and definitely the home of my ancestors. Despite having never lived in Scotland I do feel Scottish, partly due to my family and partly due to an affinity with the more favourable elements of the national stereotype; the underdog spirit, stoicism, passionately windswept, perpetually hard-done by, brave. Of course, I do also have a penchant for some of the less favourable elements too; a love of unhealthy food and a lack of sporting success. These latter two elements would be keenly experienced in a trip north of the border for my cousin Adam's stag do.

Now, in a slightly contrary fashion, Adam had already been married in Las Vegas shortly before the weekend. He didn't want to miss out on a mancentric weekend of jollity however, not after the stag weekend of his brother had been so resoundingly successful, and so a belated bash was organised in his home city of Edinburgh to coincide with the Open. My father, brother, and I would travel up for the weekend to enjoy food, drink, and golf, all in large Scottish quantities.

Cousins Adam and David

As my cousins live in Edinburgh and Ayr respectively I don't get to see them particularly often. Prior to Dave's stag do it had been several years, but we're hoping to carry on an annual meet-up style event (and hopefully one not dependent on a McIntosh getting married...) It's always great catching up with my cousins and uncle, along with their respective wives and this year the newest addition to the clan, wee Blake. He's already looking like one to grow up breaking hearts and records.

Wee Blake

This year's jaunt delivered, just as predicted, the usual Scottish goods; ample portions of great food were provided by the Red Squirrel, Khushi's, and the Albanach bar; strong drink came mainly in the form of ale, lager, whisky, and the obligatory round of OVD & Irn Bru; amusing disappointment came from a disasterous final round from Martin Laird, my own unfortunate dropping of a newly bought bottle of OVD, and a 4am evacuation due to a fire alarm on the Friday night (not ideal after drinking and eating to the edge of nausea).

Now, I had to take the opportunity to slip in a cooked breakfast whilst in Edinburgh, as Scottish breakfasts often feature components not often seen on an English plate. Sadly, the Albanach Bar on Edinburgh's High Street didn't utilise the vegetarian black pudding I'd seen advertised elsewhere, but it did feature the more conventional tattie scone and the more Caledonian vegetarian haggis.

 Vegetarian Breakfast

A mixed grill of prime Quorn sausage, vegetarian haggis, mushrooms, baked beans, grilled tomatoes, fried egg, hash browns, potato scone and grilled buttered toast

Vegetarian Breakfast: £7.99

Seen by many as a paradox, or simply an aberration, the vegetarian haggis is a wonderful thing. Regularly tasty, sales of the vegetarian variety of haggis account for almost 25% of Macsween's annual haggis sales, an impressive figure. As it shares a lot of its ingredients with more readily recognisable foods like stuffing and nutroast, you can be assured that any fearful talk is solely due to people's lack of familiarity with it, rather like a Victorian's paranoia about "exotically dangerous mesmeric savages" from North Africa and the Far East. The haggis is not exotic, dangerous, or savage, and it would certainly be a stretch to describe its taste as mesmeric (at least, that which was served at the Albanach was not mesmeric), but it is definitely hearty and homely, and encapsulates those more positive Scottish stereotypes; passion and bravery. In practice here, it tasted oaty and meaty, rather like a cross between sausage and stuffing.

The Stag Party

The other less familiar item was the potato scone, essentially a potato pancake that had inevitably been fried into beauty and was slick, smooth and salty. The rest of the breakfast unfolded as it often does down south, with a reliable sense of tastiness, marked with the odd hitch here and there.

The sausages, of a vegetable variety, were akin to bubble & squeak, potatoey and herby, but possibly too mushy. The mushrooms were rich but with a subtle smokiness. The hash browns were similar to their potato cousin in sharing a light and thin crispiness with a salty edge, but this gave way to fluffy innards. The beans, initially forgotten by the waiting staff (!) were powerful and warm, yet lacking a fundamental fruitiness. The eggs had firm whites and slow yolks. As is often the case, the tomatoes had a nice, discrete tang.

On the whole this was a classic tourist's British cooked breakfast, with pleasing regional variants added to place it firmly as a Scottish piece, without plunging it into the realms of pastiche. Fortunately, despite Edinburgh's love of tartan tat tourist traps, we saw no eateries offering an entirely deep-fried breakfast. Perhaps in some of the murkier quarters of the city such things exist, but as it was, our weekend kept us entirely in the realms of the respectable. Well, apart from the frenzied panic that saw me wake up screaming at 4am, hurling my bedclothes across the room upon hearing the fire alarm. Oh, and my brother throwing up multiple times before that. And then there was the fridge filled solely with cookies, doughnuts, and Irn Bru. And my father's unfortunately malfunctioning belt. And...

Roll on next year!