Scottish Food News – March 2017
We start March's round-up with the return of everyone's favourite bluntly-named drinks event, as Gin Festival returns to Glasgow. The Briggait hosts more than 100 gins, along with chat from gin experts, music to aid in the drinking of gin, and food to go alongside your gin. Gin. 3-5 Mar, various times, 141 Bridgegate, tickets £10, ginfestival.com
Meanwhile in Edinburgh, there's new fortnightly "adventure oriented dinner & film night" Eat + Wonder Supperclub. This month's theme is Water, but luckily for all of us, the action remains firmly on dry land, centred around a host of local, foraged, wild and preserved ingredients in a three-course meal. There are a quartet of short films screening alongside the meal, and everything's wrapped up in a watery theme. Ideal for those of you who fancy being outdoorsy, but would rather just go for a nice meal instead; now you can do both. 10 & 24 Mar, 7pm, £32.45, book via Eventbrite.
Also in the capital this month is SpontanScran, a celebration of spontaneously fermented beers at the Edinburgh Food Studio. Headed up by the dream team of top beer man Joe Dick (formerly of The Hanging Bat) and chef Craig Grozier, the evening will explore the unique way in which spontaneously fermented beers get their flavour and oomph, while pairing dishes to go alongside. You'll learn a lot, you'll have some delicious food and beer, and you might even misunderstand the science and spend the next week trying to 'catch' yeast – highly recommended. 9, 10 & 11 Mar, 7.30pm, 158 Dalkeith Rd, from £42, edinburghfoodstudio.com
One of this food section's highlights of the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe, Bilal Zafar's Powerpoint-infused stand-up hour Cakes hits the Glasgow Comedy Festival this month. A look at what happens when one ends between a rock and a hard place surrounded by Twitter idiots, Zafar tells the tale of an identity mix-up that saw him accused of running a Muslim-only cake shop. 14 Mar, 9.45pm, YesBar, £7.
At the other end of the bleak-but-tasty comedy spectrum, GCF also screens Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro's cult 'cannibalism for laughs' film Delicatessen. A comedy-horror-drama in which a dodgy landlord and part-time amateur butcher takes on an apartment block full of French character actors, it's a welcome reminder that if things get apocalyptic and some higher-ups decide it's time to eat the poor, they're going to be in for a fight. 17 Mar, 11pm & 18 Mar, 8.30pm, Cineworld Renfrew St, £10.20.
Next up, a pair of events from Glasgow-based food enterprise Küche, looking at food anthropology and the culinary habits and traditions of communities around the world. First is The Architecture of Hospitality, an event featuring five courses drawn from five chefs each representing a different global cuisine. The chefs will discuss the pieces that make up hospitality – what to serve, where to serve it, how to behave – in their cultures, with tasty food on the go all the while. 11 Mar, 7pm, Milk Cafe, 452 Victoria Rd, £15, book via CCA.
The following weekend, they team up with grain aficionados Ruzbowl for An Iraqi Kitchen. The event explores the culture, cuisine, landscape and stories of the country, over the course of a three-course meal. 18 Mar, 7pm, Project Cafe, 134 Renfrew St, £20, book via Eventbrite.