The Times
With the holiday season in full swing, there was no sign of Giles Coren or Chitra Ramaswami this week, so we had to make do with Charlotte Ivers enjoying a boozy lunch at “a parcel of an imagined past” – a traditional British (for which read Scottish) restaurant beloved by “social conservatives” (“Nigel Farage had his 60th birthday party at the Canary Wharf offshoot earlier this year”).
Charlotte was annoyed at the sexual innuendo of her starter, listed as a “ménage à quatre” and consisting of four types of preserved fish including “peat-smoked salmon which tastes like a waft of cigarette smoke across a pub garden on a sunny day… If that doesn’t sound appealing, Boisdale probably isn’t the place for you.”
Next came a “cannonball” of roast haggis served with traditional neeps and tatties – with no fripperies, “just crumbly, peppery goodness, a big pile of innards so much greater than the sum of its hideous parts and a lovely smooth mash”. Dessert was a bottle of New Zealand pinot noir on the cigar terrace, and that was that.
Charlotte Ivers - 2024-08-04
