So today has been quite random. We woke up expecting to be going to the Taste of Edinburgh festival this evening and we were both really looking forward to it. With top restaurants in Edinburgh (incl The Balmoral, Tigerlily and Cucina) and top chefs (incl Fabulous Baking Brothers, Lloyd Grossman, Jason Atherton), it looked to be a great evening out trying out different meals and watching demonstrations.

Unfortunately we woke up to heavy rain. Overnight the meadows were flooded and we had a text from taste telling us it was cancelled. Wahh.

Then we had some good, totally unrelated, news through the post. It was a letter from my university, which I thought would be the physical copy of my exam results. Instead it was a letter saying I had won an award for outstanding merit of the year along with a £100 cheque! This cheered me up, my hard work studying paid off, wahoo :D

So we thought we should celebrate and do something since the festival was cancelled. I was kept updated about taste on twitter. Quite a few of the restaurants had special offers for people with tickets which I thought was generous and nice of them. Then I found that Mark Greenaway and Angels with Bagpipes set up a last minute free pop-up event at Summer Hall serving up their award-winning dishes.

So yeh we kinda had to go! We went along with Nat and Mike and after a drink and a walk we arrived at the end of a queue. After around 15mins the queue started moving and we were the second batch of people to get in. It felt strange walking in to what seemed like someone’s house and it was packed! It was part of Edinburgh Uni’s Vet School, so there were a lot of strange things like coloured bubbling cylinders by the bar and other random stuff.

We were quite confused with where we were meant to go with people jammed everywhere and being British we felt we had to be in a queue. After switching queues almost three times and nearly walking in to the kitchen we managed to get some scallops with pea puree which was lovely.

After ending up outside at a seating area me and Nat decided to try again inside. This time we were a lot more strategic and managed to get desserts of Eton Mess and 2 mains -  11 hour slow roasted pork belly served with puffed crackling, pomme puree and toffee apple jus and a delicious leg of lamb dish. Delicious!!

It was funny to watch people getting food, we felt a bit like seagulls when it came around. One guy had like 10 plates of scallops all to himself (not in one go mind)! There was so much food - I think I had 4 desserts, 2 mains and a starter. The dessert was definitely my favourite, think Jon liked the pomme puree (or mash to us lot) and pork the best.

So a big thank you to everyone involved, especially to Mark Greenaway and Paul Whitecross for their yummy dishes! It’s such a shame about the festival being cancelled because of the rain, but we ended up having a great day after all.

S. xo