Scottish Food News – August 2016

As everyone and their dog heads to Edinburgh, we focus on the western end of the M8 in this month's Food News.

Feature by Peter Simpson | 29 Jul 2016

Now we don't know if you've heard, but there's some kind of festival going on in Edinburgh this month. Haha, what a funny joke, now please stop building a theatre space directly underneath our office. We've put together a guide to our pick of the foodie events at this year's Edinburgh Fringe, so this month's food news takes on a distinctly Glaswegian flavour.

We start with the Merchant City Festival, continuing this month with a clutch of foodie events. Dress for the Weather lead a Pub Typology Tour, touring Glasgow's most architecturally significant pubs and bars and looking at the ways in which their design and style were influenced by the political and social factors in play at the time. 6 Aug, 2pm

At the other end of the scale, Brewdog's Doghouse bar in Hutcheson Square host the culmination of the Festival's Pooch Parade. In addition to the usual range of people beers, Doghouse will be serving up mutt-friendly beers to the incoming canine horde. Expect to become jealous of dogs wearing nicer clothes than you; bet they don't even get a round in. Bloody dogs. 6 Aug, facebook.com/doghousemerchantcity

From beer to gin, and a gin tasting session from Times Like These, although in the notes they say: "This is not another tasting, this is entertainment." Note that full-stop; not an exclamation mark, or ellipsis, but a full-stop. This is entertainment, and you will be entertained. You will also try six gins and hear a lyrical history of the Scottish gin trade while you're at it. Lovely stuff. 7 Aug, Browns, 1 George Sq, £45, tickets via Eventbrite

We close the month looking ahead to September, and a couple of events to get in the diary, the first of which is the welcome return of Let's Eat Glasgow to SWG3. The free festival from the Real Food, Real Folk collective of Glasgow restauranteurs was a runaway success in 2015, as you'd expect from any food fest featuring the teams behind Ox and Finch, Crabshakk and Mother India among its organisers.

There'll be a produce market, you'll be able to get up close with genuine actual animals, and inside a host of Glasgow's best restaurants will be knocking together bespoke dishes for you to get stuck into. Long may this continue. 3 & 4 Sep, 1000 Eastvale Pl, free entry, food vouchers on sale at letseatglasgow.co.uk

Also at SWG3 is the debut Glasgow Juniper Festival after several successful runnings at Summerhall in Edinburgh, bringing together oodles of gins from across Scotland and beyond under one (warehouse) roof. Head along, try loads of different gins, head home with several bottles, and convince yourself that you could start your own gin festival. 10 Sep, 12-4.30pm and 5.30-10pm, £16.50, tickets via Eventbrite.

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