Beware of Palate Cleansers

This week, Christine and I had a quick trip to Edinburgh.  We went down on the noon plane, checked into the Scotsman Hotel and then we did some power shopping around the Christmas market and up and down the Royal Mile.

We stopped at the St. Giles Cathedral, which had always been closed when I had gone before.  It's a lot more square then most cathedrals and had a fairly incredible shape.  There was a guy inside playing the huge and amazing organ, and we also checked out the Thistle Chapel, which was filled with amazing hand carved seats each with different animals and symbols.

How cute is he?

We had dinner reservations at a place called Wedgwood, which had lots of good reviews.  It was a tiny little place with 28 seats upstairs and a party room downstairs.  I had been looking forward to this since I had made the reservations a month before, but when we got to the menu, it was sort of off-putting. 

The proteins were standard, but all the stuff that went with seemed sort of, hmm, gross.  We actually struggled with whether we were going to have a starter, but in the end we picked the main bit we liked the most and ordered it.  Christine has scallops with pineapple and capers to start and I had langoustine, crispy pigtail, fried oyster and sauerkraut.  

It was pretty good.  The super sour kraut cut the richness of the pigtail (crunchy) and oyster.  The langoustine were cooked perfectly.

For main, I had Hake with pea veloute.  Hake was perfectly cooked and the peas were so rich and creamy that I wanted to lick the plate.  The only thing that was a bit of a pause was our complimentary palate cleanser.  This was ginger beer with raspberry and lemon sorbet balls and a single floating raspberry.  

They suggested were eat the floating raspberry and mix it up and drink the rest.  It was disgusting - like medicine or as Christine putting alka seltzer with cough syrup.   I did enjoy watching other people try to drink it - the reaction was universal.

Christine swore that her palate was very clean and she didn't need to drink hers

The next day we had our meeting, which was the purpose of the whole visit and then headed off on the train to Inverness and was picked up by a taxi for the rest of the journey to Thurso.  There was an accident on the A9, so it was shut; forcing a 6 mile detour that added an hour to the travel time...major sigh.