Tag: food-writing

  • Tebay Services, M6, Cumbria.

    Tebay Services, M6, Cumbria.

    One of the many proclivities my auntie the gourmand, my uncle the retired vicar and my mother have in common, apart from their parents, love of odd dogs and a tendency to pedantry around the written word, is their deeply felt, somewhat illogical love of Tebay Services. They idolise Tebay. Both north and south-bound. Wonderful…

  • Wild Bean Café – Harthill, and everywhere

    Wild Bean Café – Harthill, and everywhere

    ‘I suppose,’ said Sancho, ‘You’re in some café, stuffing yourself…’ Au contraire. Not Proven. How on earth is she so prescient? I shouldn’t have taken this call. ‘…when you should be working.’ The horrid truth was I had stopped in a ‘café’ and I was ‘working’. Unfortunately, when we gentlefolk light hauliers are toiling away,…

  • Loch Fyne Oyster Bar Tree Shop Garden Centre café

    Loch Fyne Oyster Bar Tree Shop Garden Centre café

    It should be a truth universally acknowledged that one must avoid drinking coffee in a garden centre café. Hold on, I said that last week. But if a humble scribe must steal they should steal from the best and then get one’s karmic money’s worth by repeating it. Even into inanity. It also seems that…

  • The Oven at Overton Farm, Clyde Valley.

    The Oven at Overton Farm, Clyde Valley.

    It should be a truth universally acknowledged that one must avoid drinking coffee in a garden centre café. Said establishments have a captive, pliant audience of pensioners with time on their hands, home improvement on their minds, triple-locked income in their digital pockets and simply no idea of what a single origin bean blend or…

  • Tempura, Ayr.

    Tempura, Ayr.

    Is Fusion a good thing? Nuclear fusion, well it has its uses. We probably can’t do without it. Jazz Fusion, I’m not sure. I think we could do without it. I know Sancho could*. No music whatsoever from a genre beginning with the letter J is allowed on the van stereo when Sancho is driving,…

  • Brambles, Inverary.

    Brambles, Inverary.

    Inverary, originally a model town constructed by a typically ambitious Campbell Duke of Argyll always seems inexplicably busy. I cannot quite fathom the attraction. It could be the spectacular view, or the absurdly castle-y castle. The explanation I favour is that the journey time for a coach-load of pensioners from Glasgow to Inverary exactly matches…

  • Auchentullich Farm Shop, Loch Lomond-side

    Auchentullich Farm Shop, Loch Lomond-side

    My petite yet perfectly formed friend revealed what her father gets up to now he’s retired. He had worked variously as a rep for a champagne vineyard, a whisky distillery and as a wine merchant. He’s a cultured fellow who travels a lot. He loves ice cream and will regularly drive 30km to visit a…