You Say Sandwich, We Say Yeah!

Husband and I were invited to have Tea with the Queen. The annual Garden Party is held for all those who have contributed to Scottish culture, and husband has most certainly done that recently. I accompanied as a doting spouse. It was my finest hour. I even wore clean underwear and everything.  The party is held in the manicured grounds of the Palace of Holyrood, the Queen’s Edinburgh Residence and the gardens are framed by an ancient ruined Abbey and the even more ancient hill of Arthur’s Seat. On arrival, we sauntered in and amongst the invited guests, watching Queenie and Phillip bestow royal glances to simpering Royalists. We got bored and wandered off to the refreshment tent.  We’d been told the tea is the best cup of tea you’ll ever have. It wasn’t. Luke warm and anaemic, it felt like a Cup Of Tea’s dying, pathetic, younger sibling, so I moved on to other items on the menu - cold mocha drinks, passionfruit tarts, eclairs, raspberry topped cakes, e...

The classic bacon and egg roll. I want one. Every time.  This beaut comes from Bijou's , down in the Leith Links, during a rare Scottish heat wave.

A damn fine Croque Madame can be found at Word of Mouth Cafe , an incredibly comfortable and chic cafe I was taken to walking up from Leith. From the well oiled dark stained wooden tables to the soaps in the loo, the overall aesthetic of the cafe was incredibly convivial to a certain tempo in how I like to enjoy my meals and conversations. The food was also exceptional, beginning with a very berry smoothie that reminds me of home, classic crispy frites which I never knew I missed until being only offered chunky rubbery chips, a light vinaigrette over the mixed salad, and a very well done croque madame, with the right saltiness of ham to cheese, with the egg seemingly embedded into the top of the really good thick slice of bread. The clincher was the liberal use of dried parsley, which is a sight for sore eyes, dashed over everything hot and visually tied it all into the salad. Maybe the food in Scotland has just been really bad, but I went really wild for this meal as it's fresh an...

This is more about memory and nostalgia than the savoury quality of this meatball panini from Costa. My first bite in Scotland was sitting at a Costa, in Glasgow at Queen Street eating a breakfast sandwich. I really had no clue where I was or where I was heading, just that I had ten minutes to eat this thing, be surrounded by my luggage I've carried across all of North America, Iceland, and now the UK, and enjoy the bit of heat in this meal as I did not know when or where my next one would be. Every time I passed a Costa, I remembered it as my first tangible experience in Scotland, and I had actually not returned until this past weekend, four months later, when I played host for the first time. It's not that Costa is amazing, it's not bad, especially for transit food, for food you eat while you're waiting in the inbetween, as another homogenous coffee shop in another anywhere space . . . but it's your personal associations and the value you give to ordinary things ...

I grew up with Marks and Spencer as an exclusively high end clothing store, so it was to my great surprise that you can get all sorts of sandwiches and jaffa cakes en masse at any M&S store along with cheap tees and anything else you would need. This selection of bite size rolls including British ham salad, British chicken salad, and egg salad, was a nice little treat on a busy travel day, and their other snacks and wraps have been not so bad. The packaging is simple, though not ideal for travel. (A side note: A Glaswegian told me that she finds it comforting when she sees a M&S, to know one is nearby, and I can only possibly relay the same affection for Shopper's Drug Mar ts, though their sandwich selection is nowhere sufficient.) There are boxed sandwiches everywhere you go, especially in Edinburgh, and this lemon chicken salad concoction was from the cafe at the Royal Botanical Gardens , which paired with their homemade soup, was a bit of a disappointment. I've had ...

Finnegans Sandwich Bar and Club Sandwich. There were more! Proving a city on the go has more sandwich options?