The Dogs (revisited) and Philosophy

When I first started studying photography ten years ago, digital cameras were insanely expensive and only used by top professionals and early-adopting amateurs. Although film was fairly cheap, it still cost £4 or so to buy and develop a roll of pictures. This had the advantage of making people think twice about clicking the shutter.

Now, everyone has a digital. Even a basic mobile phone will have a camera with a decent number of megapixels on it. Although this has allowed people to capture moments they wouldn't have been able to afford to catch on film (such as action shots where 30 pictures are blurred but 1 is amazing), it also makes people quite unthinking with their cameras. I once went on holiday with a friend who obsessively documented the whole trip. While she got some nice snaps of the Sagrada Familia, I was less happy about being constantly photographed in the airport, on buses, eating my dinner and while trying to apply suntan lotion. Sometimes it's better to just put the lens down and experience what is happening first hand.

I've been following the recent chat on the WoM blog about modern etiquette, and I still think that taking pictures of your dinner in restaurants is generally bad form. The only blog I have ever deleted from my RSS reader was 90% pictures of restaurant meals, and as well as making me feel that the blogger would be the most irritating person to go for dinner with, it was just boring. Why do I care what a salad in a restaurant 2000 miles away looks like? I want to know what made the meal special, and in the case of far-flung restaurants, if there are unusual flavours or methods I can recreate at home. I can forgive photography on very striking looking dishes, but most of the time I am not a fan. Looking back over my past reviews, most of the ones with photos were taken either when I was on my own, or hastily snatched while dining companions visited the bathrooms.

So it is for these reasons that this article contains only one photograph, and one that was not taken by me.

Dining Room at The Dogs (from their website)

After raving about The Dogs all year, I finally dragged my flatmates along there for dinner. Things got off to a bad start, with us arriving late for our reservation and two people short. Just as we were about to give up and order for him, E arrived from his waiting job just around the corner. The waitress was very nice about the delay we caused, and gave E plenty of time to peruse the menu, while the rest of us worked our way through a bottle of house red and some very tasty warm bread.

For starters, E had the mushroom and vegetable pate, which was had a large dose of woody, mushroom flavour in it. The pate was deliciously rich and thick, although the portion of pate outweighed the slice of toast that accompanied it, forcing E to leave half his portion as he had nothing to spread it on! A had a whitebait salad, which was a small mound of leaves covered in a giant portion of tiny spicy fish. Again, the main complaint that it was a little too large as a starter, nonetheless A was very pleased to receive such a good amount of fish instead of the stingy toppings you sometimes get with salads. I ventured in to offal territory, and had lamb sweetbreads on toast. I've never tried them before, so have little to compare them to. They had the texture of the melting fat you get with pork crackling, but without the greasiness. My portion was well sized, but the drizzle of sherry sauce meant that some parts of the dish were a little bit dry and bland.

At this point, we also got a portion of chips cooked in dripping to share. While the chips on my last visit had been good, this portion was transcendental. The thick cut chips were perfectly crunchy on the outside, almost shattering when cut. Inside was creamy and smooth. They were possibly some of the most delicious chips I have ever eaten.

Given E's current experience working in the restaurant industry, we also spent a lot of the meal discussing the ethos of The Dogs. On some levels, the informality is almost off-putting. The cutlery arrives in your water glass, and a jug of tap water is given to every table as soon as they sit down. Instead of the restaurant staple of cracked pepper, each table sports a salt and pepper shaker, in the same glass cone style beloved of the greasy spoon. Yet the food is far more adventurous than restaurants of a similar price range, and often far better cooked. My humanities degree lead me to suggest that The Dogs is in some way a deconstruction of what makes a good restaurant, with some accepted conventions deliberately ignored and challenged. This is perhaps taking it all far too seriously.

Moving on to the main course, L (who had skipped the starter) opted for the tomato barley risotto. The plate was filled with fat grains of barley, and large chunks of tomato. The barley added a layer of nuttiness to the tomato sauce, and was very tasty indeed. It was also very filling, and anyone without an enormous appetite is probably best sticking to the small portion.

A ordered the vegetable and pulse bake, which came with a goat's cheese mash topping. This was also declared delicious, although rather stodgy and heavy. Again, not an option for the light appetite.

E ordered the tomato seafood stew, which came with a large hunk of soda bread. I found this rather sour tasting, and E complained that the mussels had overwhelmed the other ingredients. This potentially could be a great dish, but it just didn't seem to come together the way it should on this occasion.

I had a the grilled trout with green salad broth. I did not have any food envy at all! The trout skin was crispy, while the flesh underneath was tender and flaky. The green salad broth was heavy with the scent of mussels, and tasted like a salad that had seafood dressing. It was quite a strange sensation to eat! There were also a couple of fat mussels hiding in the broth, which also featured chunky celery, cucumber and potatoes. Unfortunately one of my mussels was a bit gritty, but apart from that it was a stand out dish.

We finished up with a bowl of ice cream, raspberry rice pudding and lemon thyme posset. I am officially in love with posset, and I couldn't fault the creamy texture with the zing of lemon. The dish was topped with crystallised strands of lemon zest, which gave a crunchy contrast to the posset, which was studded with chopped thyme. E's rice pudding was also a hit, with A proclaiming that the taste took him back to childhood in the same way that Anton Ego's ratatouille did in the eponymous film.

Overall, I would describe a visit to The Dogs as similar to visiting an eccentric aunt and uncle, who happen to be channelling Nigella Lawson and Nigel Slater to various degrees. The food will be delicious, with the occasional major triumph and minor slip, and the atmosphere quirky but friendly. It is a very strong contender for my all time favourite restaurant, and I dare you to find a better chip!

Tailend Fish Bar, Leith

This post was meant to be about croissants. I'd laminated some yeasted dough, rested it, and left it overnight ready to bake myself some fresh croissants for breakfast. I carefully rolled out the pastry, cut it in to triangles, and rolled them over to form the distinct croissant shape. After 20 minutes rising in a warm place, and 25 minutes in a hot oven, it was time to eat.

They were slightly crispier on the outside than was ideal, but no matter. Inside, the dough was hot and steamy, but not right. Instead of being buttery, light and fluffy, it was stodgy, yeasty and dense. Yuech!

So instead of telling you how to fail at croissant baking, I'll tell you about some really awesome fish and chips I had.

E has a friend, K, staying with us for the summer. He arrived on Sunday, jetlagged and exhausted from the transatlantic flight. Instead of letting him rest, we decided to drive him to Leith for some traditional fish and chips.

It's a bit of a tradition to deep fry things in Scotland, and there is a rumour that a chip shop exists where they will deep fry ANYTHING for you. It starts with a Mars bar, and ends up with you paying to batter your shoes.

Most chips shops are ok, but not great. You'll get some soggy chips, and greasy bit of overcooked fish. It's ok if you are drunk at 4am, but less ok if that's your dinner. I'd heard that the Tailend was different, and were more about good quality fish well cooked than trying to outdo the chippy down the road for how many different pizza flavours they can deep fry. (Yep. In Scotland even pizza can be deep fried.)

We opted for take away, as we didn't really have enough money to afford to eat the same food in the next door restaurant. If you take away, it's about half the price of sitting in, but essentially the same food. E and K went for the Cod supper, and I went for the Hake and chips.

The food took quite a while to come, and the staff, while friendly, weren't the most efficient. We eventually got our bag of greased up goodies and went home to eat it.

The first thing I noticed when removing the boxes from the bag, was how little grease there was soaked in. The reason many chip shops wrap everything in several layers of paper is to prevent your hands getting too greasy when all the fat starts coming out of the food. The Tailend boxes were still pretty pristine from grease, which suggested the fish and chips had been fried at the correct temperature and well drained before being packed up.

Reasonably small amount of grease

Although the chips had gone a bit soggy from the 15 minute journey back to the flat, they were still crispy on the outside, while soft and meltingly tender inside. They were my dream chip. I love getting fat chips (no skinny fries for me) which are actually crunchy.

Dream chips and Great Hake

The fish was also delicious, with a crispy batter surrounding the flaky flesh. Deep frying will never showcase fish in the same way sushi or grilling does, but it makes a bloody good attempt when done right.

The only downside is that Leith is so far away!

The Dogs

For my actual birthday dinner T and I went to The Dogs, a fairly new place that has only been open since the start of this year (sadly replacing T's favourite Mexican restaurant). The owner is David Ramsden, who has also be waiting tables every time we've been, which I think shows much more commitment than I would have if I owned a restaurant. I'd be sat in the corner drinking the free wine and sampling the chef's latest ideas!

For starters, I had sardines with red cabbage slaw, and T had mushrooms and brie on toast. Both of these came out the kitchen lightening fast, which was good as we'd had a strenuous day walking around Edinburgh Zoo and were pretty peckish. For someone who is not a cabbage fan, I seem to be ordering it a lot lately, and what is more, liking it! The slaw was crunchy and had a good amount of sauce, and worked well with the cured sardines. It was also presented slightly oddly, with the sardines buried underneath a heap of cabbage. However, my main complaint with this dish that there was too much cabbage for the amount of sardines. It was also pretty hefty for a starter, although to some extent The Dogs doesn't have starters and main courses, it has small, big and sharing.

T was happy with his mushrooms on toast, and it seemed a much more suitable sized starter than mine. There wasn't much brie in the dish, and we weren't sure if this was intentional or not. Luckily, T had ordered it for the mushrooms on toast element, so wasn't really bothered about the lack of cheese. We also had some bread to go with the starters, which was good, especially to mop up some of the excess coleslaw with!

For the main course, we shared a crispy pork belly, with roasted carrots, parsnips and butter beans. We also got some chips as the were advertised as "cooked in dripping" and we couldn't resist. The vegatables were all very good, and I particularly liked the parsnips. The beans also matched the pork belly and homemade mustard very well. I thought the pork belly was a little tough in places, and the skin could have been crispier. You'd take one bite that was perfect, melting meat with a crunchy topping, and the next would be tough with chewy skin. I don't know whether we were just unlucky or if it could have been done with being cooked in a different way. T is quite fussy about his meat, and won't eat it if it is too chewy, rare, dry or fatty. He seemed to enjoy his half, so I am tempted to think that I was just unlucky with my half.

My other complaint was again portion size. We got a massive slice of belly meat, and plenty of vegetables, and it was far too much. I much prefer to have small portions of several dishes than a massive plate of one thing, although when I cook myself I tend to give out generous portions! I felt a bit overwhelmed by the size of the dish, and felt the pressure was on to finish it. I think if it had been T and one of his male friends eating just a main course, they would have been very happy, but with a starter and a girly appetite there wasn't enough room!

Concerning the chip thesis, The Dogs furthered supported my theory. The chips were fat cut, but perhaps a little too fat in places, the crispy:soft ratio was sometimes a bit off. Cooking them in dripping meant the outsides were very crunchy, and the insides soft and fluffy, with an overall hint of meatiness about them. T and I fought over the crunchy scraps at the bottom of the bowl! Like the starter and main course, the chips were very good but not quite perfect.

Despite this, there is always room for dessert. I went for the lemon and lime posset, although I was sorely tempted by the mince pie parfait (I've also been thinking about making brandy ice cream with bits of Christmas pudding in it, but that's another story). This was refreshing after such a big meal, and possibly a contender for one of my favourite foods. T had ice cream with toffee sauce. The sauce was dark and treacley, and not too sweet.

Overall I really like The Dogs, as I like being able to get good local food in a fairly relaxed atmosphere, and with a reasonable price tag. I also like that they bring you a jug of tap water as standard, and that you can get wine in a 500ml carafe. We've also been here with my parents and siblings, so it is good for a meal for two as well as a family gathering. Many reviews I have read online of The Dogs complain about the service, which is a bit brisk. For us, this was fine as we didn't mind being left alone during the meal and didn't feel we had to wait too long for our order to be taken, or for food to arrive. Another issue here is that the staff, particularly David Ramsden, have a bit of an individual sense of humour that you either get or don't. Kismot is another Edinburgh restaurant that suffers from this. Personally I like a bit of banter, although I have been out to dinner with others who have interpreted the comments as rude or inappropriate. The mismatched furniture and china reminded us of Monster Mash, which a bit of googling suggests was founded by David Ramsden as well. He also used to run the Outsider and the Apartment, which I also like, so I think we are obviously on a similar food based wavelength!

The Chip Thesis

As a student with not much money, I am forced to eat in some pretty poor places. While I love a good lunch, the places near uni that are a) cheap and b) cheap aren't always the most inspiring. There are exceptions, and I have a theory for how to find (some of) them.

A lot of the places we end up in serve burgers. I do like burgers, but the combination of mince and lots of sauce means it is easy to disguise poor quality ingredients and bad cooking. Burgers usually come with chips. Chips are theoretically quite easy, as you just chop up some potatoes then fry them. However, bad chips are very common and possibly one of the most disappointing things ever. I'm thinking of on the way home after a few drinks, and you buy a bag of chips and tuck in... and they're so bad.

The perfect chip, in my opinion anyway, should be chunky. That way you get more of a contrast between the crispy outside and the soft centre*. No matter how fat the chip is, it is imperative that the outside is crispy and the centre is soft and smooth. Also, you can nearly always tell if the chips have been frozen as they go floury inside, and have an almost metallic taste. If they are not crispy then the oil wasn't the right temperature. Chips represent a bellwether for the rest of the food. If they can be bothered to use fresh chips in the right oil, then they've probably got good meat in the burgers and won't disguise it with rubbish sauce.

So the moral of this story is always steal one of your dining partner's chips before you commit to lunch...


*I will devour a plate of shoestring chips if necessary.