Grub Crawl

I’ve been meaning to write up a little adventure we went on, a couple of weeks back. Christened “grub crawl” by Tim, one of the participants in the fun, it comprised a three course meal split across different locations. It’s an idea I’d toyed with for a while, so was glad to finally put it into action.

Our evening started at Reekie’s Smokehouse on Holyrood Road. Rather distressingly, the place had been burglarised early that day, but the owner Craig was manfully forging on. With the night’s team of Graham, Joanna, Mairi and Tim assembled, we embarked on the first course.

Largely leaving the decisions in Craig’s hands, our only specification was for a portion of the smoked veggie haggis to suit Mairi’s vegetarian needs. For the omnivores, we had a whole rack of ribs, brisket and meaty baked beans, as well as pickles, slaw and a smoky tomato salsa. This was augmented by their signature condiments.

The smoked haggis was really good and the tomato salsa just lovely. The meaty goodness really hit the spot. We sampled a nice selection of beers to wet our whistles, too.

We were soon on our way having had a thumpingly good starter. A little recuperative walk was needed before we were ready for main courses.

Our next stop was a uphill walk away at Paradise Palms, where the joys of Ninja Buns awaited us. With an MS society fundraiser comedy night providing the jolly backdrop, we tucked in to a range of curry, buns and rice bowls. My beefy rice bowl was impressively good. The food met with a resounding thumbs up from everyone.

With cheery thanks passed on to Markus and Inga who’d done wonders in the kitchen, as usual, we stepped towards our final port of call, Civerino’s.

This newish, informal Italian has been a frequent stopping point, of late. Their Nutella calzones are the stuff of legend, but on this visit the tiramisu was the real winner. Not a spoonful was left, nor a crumb of calzone. We had fun with their frozen negroni machine, too.

This rounded out what had been a resoundingly successful evening. I’m minded to do the whole exercise more regularly, and would be interested to work out a route across three places I’ve not yet tried. Starters at Wings would be a good plan, perhaps.

Let me know your ideas and your favourite three courses across the city. And if you fancy joining a grub crawl in the future, do give me a shout.