Food&Drink News&Reviews
A bistro you can bank on Porto & Fi’s new café-bistro on the Mound makes the most of a great location, location, location, as Gemma Harris discovers
SIDE DISHES NEWS TO NIBBLE ON
JUNE’S WEST END FESTIVAL in Glasgow incorporates dozens of food and drink events, from barbies, demos and beer tastings to a Greek food fair at St Luke’s Greek Orthodox Cathedral and a locally foraged food event. On Mon 20 June Hillhead Library hosts The West End Means Business, with local retailers talking about what makes the area so special. See westend festival.co.uk for more.
EARTHY FOODS & GOODS in Edinburgh have expanded their Yum café to take up the entire ground-floor level of their Causewayside operation, with a new butchery counter from Perthshire’s Hugh Grierson Organics moving in upstairs. See earthy.co.uk.
THE TASTE OF EDINBURGH restaurant festival in early July is shaking
off its parochial handcuffs by including Glasgow venues for the first time, with Café Gandolfi, Cail Bruich and Two Fat Ladies joining in the eating and drinking jamboree in the Meadows. See tastefestivals.com /edinburgh.
I t’s a nice spot – for a former mortgage office of the Bank of Scotland. Just off the Royal Mile, with its views over the New Town and beyond, you can imagine over-stretched buyers being given a tantalising vision of Edinburgh below, Last Temptation style: ‘This kingdom can be yours... just sign here.’
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These days, of course, you can’t get a mortgage for love nor money, so you’ll have to make do with comfort food at the new Porto & Fi on the Mound (they’ll do you a much better deal, to boot). Andrew and Fiona MacInnes, the brother and sister behind this and the original Porto & Fi in Newhaven, have done a great job on their new des res. A full glass frontage makes the most of the scenery – you’re eye- level with the tip of the Scott Monument – and they’ve exposed higgledy Old Town stonework to contrast with modern, Eames-look chairs, brown banquettes and claret-coloured drum lampshades. A tree-shaded terrace, set to open onto Lady Stair’s Close, should be perfect for brunch or an after-work prosecco in the summer. While the Newhaven P&F is a daytime café with bistro cooking, this Edinburgh-centre branch is more all-day bistro, serving until 10pm most nights. Some unusual options ring the changes: cassoulet with
48 THE LIST 26 May–23 June 2011
Generous views, generous portions Taters not so tasty
rabbit confit, a Moorish-style carrot and butternut pastilla (pie), or a roll of pork belly stuffed with bacon and cabbage and cooked in cider, full of smoky, Germanic flavours.
Newhaven regulars will be glad to see the fish pie topped with leek mash and the pretty pail-full of haddock goujons are on offer here, too. Another standard, the house burger – home-made with good, lean beef – is rather too tightly packed to be juicy, and the chips with it a bit tired. Oddly, the single fondant potato that comes with the pork belly suffers from the same. With so much great Scottish produce on the menu, especially light and lemony mussels marinière and excellent hot-smoked salmon from Welch’s fishmongers, they just need to bring those tatties up to scratch.
PORTO & FI ON THE MOUND
9 North Bank Street, Old Town, Edinburgh 0131 225 9494, portofi.com
Food served: Mon–Sat 10am–10pm; Sun 10am–6pm Ave. price two-course meal: £15 (lunch) / £15 (dinner)
BAR CRAWLER GALLUS 80 Dumbarton Road, West End, Glasgow
To call a Glasgow bar Gallus you’ve got to be, well, a bit gallus. In other words, interesting drinks, live local bands, poker nights and a pool table all in a supremely confident but still engaging package. For the first ever Glasgow Beer Week (see events), it’s hosting a CAMRA social on Sunday 29 May.