Good food anywhere on these islands is amazing. But food, like so many things, is modified by finance. Hence, frying at low temperatures, because it's cheaper, for example.
In the days when i did regularly go out to eat, my days in Edinburgh as it happens, I found that resturants tend to be at their best in their first 12 months. After that, with a regular client base, they would be bought out, costs cut to increase profit, so reduce standards. One, I recall, started in West Bow. It served sort of German/Italian type food with a very British accent. Kinda tacky, with wooden floors and wads of paper under the table legs. In the toilets, the walls were painted with black poster paint, so people would bring in a pocket full of chalk and write things on the wall. When it was bought out, they lowered cooking tempertures and used cheap bread.
For some reason, the British seem to generally make disgusting bread.
If all the places I've lived, I have to say I miss Edinburgh the most. It will be a very different place today of course, but it was always so exciting in a very stayed sort of way. Like an alien could arrive from outer space and someone might comment, 'Aye weel, so wit else is happenin'?'.
Great thread by the way.
