Eating at The Fringe Festival

For the last 20 days, Edinburgh has been busy with the various festivals that are held here during August. There's books, opera, dance, theatre, and a nightly RAF flyover at 9pm on the dot. The biggest of all the festivals is the Fringe, which tends to be mostly comedy with the odd hint of amateur theatricals.

Much of the Fringe takes place in the University Unions. It's very strange to see the bar where you'd go for a cheap drink after lectures packed full of "real" people. Weirder still is that Pleasance Sports Hall is a major venue. Normally, queuing outside Pleasance equals an exam. Queuing with a beer in hand to see stand up messes with my mind.

Most Fringe tickets are unreserved, so you have to stake your place in the queue 30 minutes or so before the show starts if you want a choice of seats - otherwise you can find yourself split up if you are in a big group, or sitting in centre front row for a comedian who likes to pick on the audience. This isn't really a major problem, but for those seeing several shows on the same day, it can mean that once you have traveled between venues, you have little or no time to eat. (Ok, I realise that this is probably only a problem for me, but it is a serious one! You try sitting through an hour of hip-hop theatre when you desperately need some food!)

Assembly Rooms on George Street has a pretty standard cafe on the premises, and the Pleasance complex has a small barbecue van that does ok burgers and sausages, and a small cafe. Pleasance Dome also has the guys from the Mosque Kitchen serving decent curries for bargain prices.

However, the most interesting eating at the Fringe is to be had in Bristo Square, in the courtyard of the Guilded Balloon (otherwise known as Teviot to the locals). With all the American blogs and food sites going mental over gourmet food trucks, it's good to see a few food vans that aren't just burger and chips here in the UK. They're great to grab a snack at in-between shows, and everything is portable should you need to queue and nosh simultaneously.

La Creperie - Not that exciting, but sometimes you *need* a pancake with Nutella.


Wee Hut - Serves several types of wurst, I am going to try the smoked wurst next.


La Favorita Pizza Oven - Features a real wood fired pizza oven (you can see the black chimney at the the top of the photo). Generally very tasty and stays open late. (Although they had a sign today proclaiming themselves "Athur (sic) Smith's Favourite Pizza")


Well Hung and Tender - Comedy name, but seriously good burgers. T was put off by the open air relish station, but I enjoyed using coffee stirrers to sample all the condiments before deciding that the mustard mayo should grace my burger.

Fish Mussels - Not quite in Bristo Square, but around the corner at Hullaballoo. Doesn't serve fish, but does serve mussels in a classic white wine and garlic type sauce.

It also serves these bad boys...


I wasn't sure whether I liked oysters or not. I can't remember ever eating a raw one, and when I can remember eating one, they've always been deep-fried. The oysters are freshly shucked as you order them, and garnished with a squeeze of lemon and a drop or two of Tabasco. However, since plucking up the courage to try one the other day, I've been back for more. Very delicious and a really unusual streetfood option!

Craigies PYO Farm, Near South Queensferry

Last year we spent a lot of time trying to go to Pick Your Own farms, but the only time we actually made it to one, it had been raining too heavily that week and the PYO fields were closed. When the sun struggled through the clouds on Sunday morning, we headed out to Craigie's Farm to grab some strawberries while we could!

The farm is just outside Edinburgh, with a great view of the airport! I kept hearing "thunder" only to realise it was a plane landing! You can also see out over Edinburgh to the surrounding hills, and over the Forth to Fife. After wandering around in the shop for a bit, we eventually found the pile of PYO punnets at the entrance to the fields.

View to Fife

We started off in the Strawberry rows, and soon filled a large punnet with 2kg of strawberries. The plants were not all completely ripe, so it was fun digging around under leaves and trying to spot the ripest ones. It was also great to sample a few berries along the way, although it probably wasn't the most hygienic thing you could do.

Spot the Ripe Strawberries...

Carrying our massive basket of strawberries, we headed over to the gooseberry bushes. They were quite spiky and we got a few nips off some of the more thorny branches. We didn't pick quite so many of these, but I wanted to try the Valentine Warner recipe for gooseberry snow, so we settled at half a small punnet (about 500g).

Finally, we trekked down to the bottom of the farm for the outdoor raspberries. These were the easiest to pick, as unlike the strawberries you didn't have to crouch down so low, and the bushes weren't spiky like the gooseberries. I don't think I've ever seen a raspberry bush before, and it was interesting how the raspberries left their white conical hulls on the bush. I always assumed that raspberries must have been hollowed out in a factory somewhere! As the raspberries were off the ground, they weren't as muddy as the strawberries, and for a while I was following a "one for the basket, one for me" style of picking! Fortunately for Craigie's profit margin, the Scottish weather started closing in, and we hurried to fill our punnet before the rain soaked us.

T hard at work in the raspberry field

As we walked back to the farm, the threatened rain didn't quite appear, so instead I took some arty shots of the punnets. We also passed redcurrents and blackcurrents, but we didn't get any of these on this occasion, although we did enjoy playing at being farmers! There are also lots of other PYO items that haven't come in to season yet, so I'm already planning the next trip!

Craigies PYO Fruit

Although we spent a fair bit of money, we got a lot of fruit. We didn't realise quite how good a deal we got until we stopped at Sainsbury's on the way home. We'd paid £3.99 per kg for our raspberries, but the ones in the supermarket were £8.84per kg! The cheapest supermarket strawberries we could find were £4 per kg, compared to our ones at £3.49. The supermarket fruit looked pretty sad in comparision to the stuff in the car boot, which had been attached to a plant less than an hour ago.

We ate the first batch of strawberries that night with cream, to maximise the freshness. I think some of it will end up as jam, while the excess raspberries and gooseberries are probably headed for the freezer, or summer puddings. I can't wait!