Scotland's Cuisine (Featuring Stirling)

Our B&B in Callander.

Haggis.

With the properly disgusted contortion of face and body language, Jay Leno regularly makes the “Tonight Show” audience laugh by merely saying the word, “Haggis,” despite the fact that most Americans have never tried it.

You probably don’t want to give any more thought to how Scots make haggis than what Americans put in hotdogs, but when I ate haggis with my full Scottish breakfast at Red Squirrel on our first morning in Edinburgh, I found it tasted very much like delicious American breakfast sausage but with the texture of deviled ham.

While not everyone ate haggis, we all agreed with my son Jay’s assessment that the morning feast at Red Squirrel was “epic.”



St. Cuthbert's Church in Edinburgh



The full Scottish breakfast also came with egg, hot tomatoes, sautéed mushrooms, English banger (more like a short, fat hotdog than an American breakfast sausage) and bacon (to my American eye it was pan-fried sliced ham). The coffee also proved to be very good.

So, despite warnings about Scottish cuisine being horrible, I found it quite satisfying.

I enjoyed slight variations of haggis when I had similar full Scottish breakfasts at our B & B's in Ayr and Stahray, so it wasn’t exclusively Red Squirrel’s take on Scotland’s signature dish.

Another mainstay of Scottish cuisine, pub food, proved to be consistently edible if not always aces.

Wes and Jay at the Castle Arms in Edinburgh.

In the UK and Ireland, I’ve tended to order fish and chips frequently in pubs, always finding that ubiquitous meal delicious, and the same holds true in Scotland. The best was on the Isle of Skye at the Hebridean, which was basically the only choice for dining within walking distance of our B & B.


Unlike a cruise, where onboard watering holes are a short walk from our room, on a land trip there are unfamiliar roads and traffic rules, including driving on the wrong side of the road and shifting gears lefthanded in the UK, turning an already risky proposition of driving after alcohol into something considerably more perilous, so we simply won’t do that. And for me, enjoying pub food for dinner includes tipping a pint or two of Guinness or some local beer like Belhaven’s Best, so I almost definitely will do that.



Isle of Skye

The fried haddock at the the Hebridean was enormous: thick, wide and too long to fit on the dinner plate that also held a mountain of chips (British for French fries). As usual, plan to throw away the odd-tasting pub vegetable side dish. Eating the chips with salt and vinegar rather than the American way with ketchup completes the perfect pub meal.

We ate at the Hebridean twice, and the second night I had the house specialty, smoked salmon in sweet chili sauce, which was tasty but not nearly as filling or satiating to me.

Guinness (an Irish brand that enjoys international fame including across the short sea crossing to Scotland), English bangers and sweet chili sauce for the salmon foreshadow my point; Scottish restaurants do not serve haggis and other native foods exclusively. After centuries of fighting off foreign influence, it’s easy to recognize that Scotland now welcomes it.

Wes kayaking on Loch Lomond

Still, Scotland held out about as long as possible from intermingling with the civilized world. An internet joke said the Scots have only two levels of security preparedness alerts: pissed off and let’s get the bastards. Make no mistake, everyone was nice to us, but historically Scots have not taken kindly to aggression.

When the Romans arrived in Scotland after civilizing most of Europe and the surrounding Mediterranean region, they found primitive tribes of red-haired savages who painted their faces blue, rattled their sabers and fought with all their might. After several unsuccessful military campaigns, the Romans finally had enough.

Edinburgh Castle from park below

Roman Emperor Hadrian basically said, “Look what we can do, you crazy Celts. We have the technology to build a tall wall longer than you can see to seal you off from civilization, where we have the best modern products, clean water in city fountains, public toilets and baths, theaters, restaurants, hospitals, roads and coliseums for gladiatorial games. You can keep your haggis on your side of the wall.”

In ensuing decades, the Roman Empire didn’t so much fall as morph and split into new empires, but Scotland carried on alone.



Statue of Robert the Bruce at Stirling Castle

England, on the other hand, after absorbing the cultures of conquering Romans and Normans, grew to international prominence, and naturally they saw Scotland as a connected territory to be brought into the British version of civilization.


The Scots fought the English off, winning and losing control of their country several times. At our B & B in Skye, we watched a terrible movie about Scottish hero Robert the Bruce, who won independence (at least for a while), for Scotland, and of course there’s real-life wild man Mel Gibson’s masterpiece “Braveheart” that tells another story of their struggle for independence.

If you’re like me, perhaps you found history in high school boring, because it only seemed to deal with date memorization and wars, but the stories of the changes of power and the subsequent societal evolutions are fascinating, especially when you visit the lands where it transpired.



I respect the Scottish love of freedom from outside rule, but being self-reliant doesn’t mean you have to ignore what others do well or avoid copying it. That would be the definition of ignorance.

Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh

So, while Scottish cuisine is not the horror you may have perceived based on jokes, it certainly doesn’t hurt to have other options. At “our pub,” Footlights, which we found on our first evening and returned to each night we were in Edinburgh, they combined everything you would want in a Scottish pub, from fresh beer taps to darts to rugby or European football (soccer) on TV. While I'm not saying you must go to Footlights, it is fun to have your "own pub" during a short stay. It allows you to get comfortable taking your usual table, playing darts and just feeling like one of the locals.

Footlights' menu broadened from simply Scottish foods to include multicultural treats like Cajun Chicken Nachos, which turned out to be excellent.

The British influence has become ingrained in Scottish culture over the centuries, but I still found it surprising that what I assumed was simply a tourist trap, Café at the Palace by Holyroodhouse, served a light, delicious scone that was better than any I’ve tried elsewhere.

Views on the hike to Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh

Three of us purchased a cherry-berry scone and tea while waiting inside for Jay to get back from hiking to Arthur's Seat, which I'm a little ashamed to say I decided wasn't worth ascending the final 150 feet of vertical when harder rain was imminent. What started as a somewhat obligatory purchase to justify taking up a table and seats in the winter garden turned into a treat.

Other traditional British dishes, including Sunday roast beef and Yorkshire pudding with gravy, new potatoes and veggies, were featured at the Old Racehorse Hotel in Ayr (hopefully that wasn't an old racehorse we were eating, but if it was, I wouldn't say, "Nay-a-a-a-ay.").  It was a wholesome meal for 7 pounds 99. 

The British Empire ruled India for decades, so it's no surprise that Indian food is widely available. When we visited Stirling, a strategically important city for control of Scotland in the Middle Ages, we found a delicious, modestly-priced Indian buffet at Mr. Singh’s Indian Cottage.

Jay and Amy on Seal Boat by Dunvegan Castle, Isle of Skye

This was perhaps the best meal of the trip, with great quality meat as well as vegetable dishes and freshly cooked-to-order naan bread included for 6 pounds 99. Jay and Amy, who have a lot more experience with Indian restaurants than Julie and me, agreed it was the best Indian buffet they’d ever had.

We found good Chinese food served family style in Edinburgh at a nice but far from ostentatious restaurant, Shanghai. In addition, I saw a Jamaican café, French restaurants, pizzerias, kebob joints, tapas lounges, Mexican food and other international foods, but American cuisine had a greater foothold in Scotland than most, probably due to the American desire to have tastes of home even when traveling in far off lands. We found a great hamburger, chips (British for French fries) and soda for 6 pounds 99 at the Castle Arms, a beautiful, upscale pub just off the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, but we also had one of the worst burgers, albeit at a great price of 4 pounds 99 for a burger, fries and pint of beer, at a pub in Callander near our B & B.

Edinburgh Castle at night

Our Callander B & B was Cragshotel, which has a pub with the hardest working bartender/hotel front desk receptionist in Pubdom, constantly pulling taps for a pub full of customers eager to buy 2 pound 40 pints between intermittently showing guests their rooms, and that was NOT where we had the bad burgers.

What made the burger so bad? To start, it was very fatty meat that resulted in a greasy end product. What bothered me most, however, was that I kept chomping into little sticks which I assume…make that hope…were matches to relight a faulty grill and ended up beneath my burger as it cooked. Why did I keep eating it? Good question. I will point out that this was one time I didn’t clean my plate. Fortunately for that pub, I don’t remember its name.

Awkward photo of Jay and Amy in Sterling

My point is that sticking with "safe" American fare proved to result in the worst meal of the trip, and it’s not always what you expect….except at McDonalds.  While we didn’t have McMuffins for breakfast or McDoubles for a quick and cheap lunch abroad, we did stop in for 69 pence vanilla ice cream cones a couple of times when someone needed a loo (restroom) break while driving, and as usual for McDonalds, they were as good as back home.

Taking it all full circle, we also went to what I would call an Americanized version of a pub in the otherwise somewhat odd town of Stranraer the evening before taking the ferry to Northern Ireland.



Dunscaithe Castle ruins on Isle of Ske

The village didn’t seem that odd to me, but Jay and Amy seemed to think it was right out of the Twilight Zone, and the suped-up little cars driven by young people that kept circling the streets fed their perceptions. I should have referred them to “American Graffiti.”

Anyway, the Custom House was the size of two to four normal pubs and served a TGI Friday-type menu of foods. We split a couple of big orders of chicken wings, and they were delicious. The fact that an emcee was leading trivia games, like on a cruise ship, seeemed a bit odd, especially with questions geared to Scots about which team won some regional finals in Rugby six years earlier, obscure Scottish politicians and TV shows I’d never heard of.

As one final pub food twist, on our last night of the trip at the Fiddlers Arms, Amy ordered a deep fried Mars Bar while we enjoyed some live, acoustic music.

Jay at Grassmarket in Edinburgh

I’ve already rattled on way too long on this subject, but if you’re still with me, I should point out that not only was Scottish cuisine international, the employees working at the restaurants were too. Indians operated Singhs and Chinese ran Shanghai, but we also, for example, were served a Scottish breakfast by a Polish waitress at the Coffee Mill Café in Edinburgh. She was a cute little pixie who I first thought was French. I’m not sure if the owner of the place was also her husband or Polish, but he was not Scottish.  He was very friendly, at least to paying customers. When one passerby walked in to use his restroom, he called her out on it. After she left, he said, “You’d think she’d at least buy a tea or coffee.” Then he came over to our table to talk to us.

When he learned we were from California, he put his arm around Julie and said, “How ‘bout we trade. I take your wife and go to California, I give you the keys to my café and you stay here. We trade, no?”

Statue of Adam Smith by St. Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh

By the way, that was a great breakfast, and our host custom made a huge bagel sandwich that Jay and Amy split, combining ingredients from a couple of different sandwiches.

Three hours later, at the counter of Auto Europe where we picked up our rental car to begin the motorways and backroads portion of our trip, the representative said she was also from Poland. As in America, there are lots of people born in other countries working in the service sector in Scotland, drawn to the freedom and opportunity of Adam Smith's free marketplace world.

Better service leads to better trips!