For more food and drink visit www.list.co.uk/food-and-drink
in the year in a former florists, Spark is of the less is more school: less focus on the fittings as an indication of the attention paid to decent coffee (beans from Union), homemade soup and snacks (including tasty spinach swirls) and crumb-picking cakes. Despite the hill outside we’re not in San Francisco yet, but Spark illuminates the way there.
LOCANDA DE GUSTI 7–11 East London Street, New Town, 0131 558 9581, £9.85 (lunch) / £19 (dinner) The former launderette at the foot of Broughton Street has been restyled by owner-chef Rosario Sartore from Bella Mbriana into Locanda de Gusti. With a new AA rosette to show off, Sartore is firmly back at the helm and in the kitchen again, with a number of small but significant changes such as outdoor dining (on a wonderfully sunny corner), takeaway featuring thick slabs of pizza, and internal rearrangements to give the place more intimacy. Sartore’s restaurants have always had the rhythm and style of somewhere you’d find in Italy, which tends to mean that what seems fairly unexciting on the menu masks dishes of flavour, good ingredients (an encouraging number of them Scottish) and knowledgeable cooking.
Independent write-ups on all the restaurants worth knowing about in Glasgow and Edinburgh are available on our online Eating & Drinking Guide at list.co.uk/food-and-drink. Prices shown are for an average two- course meal for one.
SIDE DISHES See You Jimmy
■ Oliver’s Army has crossed the border. Jamie’s Italian opens this week at Number One George Square in Glasgow (the old GPO building on the south edge of the square). With 250 covers, over 100 staff and the inevitable celebrity circus, it’s bound to create quite an impact. There’s no open kitchen, but expect lots of hanging hams and shiny, pillar-box red seating. It’s open seven days from noon; bookings on 0141 404 2690, www.jamieoliver.com/italian. ■ Through in Edinburgh the Italian connection comes from a source closer to home with the arrival of Angels With Bagpipes right opposite St Giles’ Cathedral on the Royal Mile. Located in former council offices, the restaurant is being set up by Marina Crolla of the well-liked Café Marina on Cockburn Street, with a Scots-Italian menu and some intriguing interior design, including a table for four in a room overhanging Roxburgh’s Close. 343 High Street, Edinburgh, 0131 220 1111.
up to provide local Sikh women with experience and training in commercial food handling, customer care and business skills. A shop conversion on the lower reaches of Leith Walk furnished with school tables spread with paper tablecloths and simply decorated, it serves a selection of traditional, and mostly familiar, North Indian dishes including a breakfast of stuffed paratha flatbread with masala tea, spicy samosas, clean-tasting curries and fresh chapattis. A cast of dozens behind the scenes helps deliver a hands-on approach that’s backed up by the honest, freshly cooked food and the enthusiasm of all involved.
SPARK 25 Dundas Street, New Town, 0131 652 3715, www.sparkcoffee.co.uk, £6 (lunch) This is one of a small collection of places around the city that might persuade you of the vibrancy of Edinburgh’s independent café scene. Opened earlier
TEA TIME AT T Jo Laidlaw finds T for your tummy is more than just a greasy pit-stop, with an emphasis on healthy food and local produce
With everything cooked on site by the producers themselves, the fabulous Food from Argyll group returns to Healthy T this year. Choose from stand-outs like Loch Fyne salmon, Bumbles puddings and Stronmagachan stovies. Featuring regular performances inspired by diners and their dinners, The Hurly Burly’s blend of cabaret, fresh bread, wandering minstrels and home-made veggie deliciousness is sure to leave the hungry happy.
If your T isn’t complete without a slab of meat in a bun, switch things up with Puddledub’s low-fat, high-taste water buffalo burgers, all from a mere eight miles away, just over the border in Fife.
Put some oooh in your la la at La Grande Bouffe – or the Big Nosh. Their hearty regional specialities include tartiflette, a traditional combination of potatoes, bacon and creamy French cheese. Dundee’s FareShare support homeless and vulnerable people and they’ll be supporting their work by providing simple and wholesome soups and sandwiches, so you can fill up and feel good at the same time.
It’s going to be a long weekend. You may need some vitamins. For a quick health-boost OSO Juicy will be whizzing up fresh smoothies and crushes in Poppy, their campervan. Bless.
8–22 Jul 2010 THE LIST 11