Scottish Food News – April 2014

April is a month built for rogues and scoundrels – it starts with a celebration of lies and deceit, and ends with children pretending to love Jesus in exchange for hollow chocolate eggs. Luckily, this month’s food news is full of examples of people not being total bastards, so there’s your faith in humanity back, we’re sorry to have shaken it.

Take Broth Mix, the Open Jar Collective’s cafe/arts project/performance art installation. Running as part of Glasgow International, the collective are setting up a community cafe loaded with art of the visual, sonic and physical varieties, and encouraging real dialogue about the way in which our insatiable lust for food affects us all. They’re doing all that, and setting up an actual cafe from scratch – if you don’t feel lazy right now, you really should. 7-21 Apr, Kinning Park Complex, 40 Cornwall St.

From community spirit and shared experience, to large pieces of red meat served with aggressively over-hopped beer – it’s Brewdog, ladies and gentlemen! In a one-night only collaboration with London burgermeisters Honest Burgers, the craft beer colossi present their BrewBurger, which as you might expect has beer all over it. Beer in the patty, a different beer on the bacon, beer in the fried onions – it sounds like a joke, but it also sounds bloody lovely so we’ll let them off. Brewdog’s new Bourbon Baby beer launches on the same night, just in case that previous sentence wasn’t beery enough to sell you on the idea. 4 Apr, Brewdog Glasgow, 1387 Argyle St.

Also on our nice list this month are the good folks behind the Inverness Whisky Festival. There’s nothing inherently noble about attracting a bunch of people to a remote wilderness to get a bit boozed up, but there’s something very nice about the prospective set-up at Inverness. No real flash or ostentatious displays of grain-fuelled excess, just a who’s who of top distillers, a nice rural-ish setting, and a barn with some food and music in it. A barn! An actual barn! Don’t know why we’re so shocked! Can’t stop! Barn! 4 & 5 Apr, Bogbain Farm, from £25.

If the idea of a drinks festival sounds good, but you don’t want to spend a lot of money or go to Inverness, try the Great Grog’s Bottled Beer Festival. It’s beer, so the chances of bankrupting yourself with two bottles are relatively small; it’s in the centre of a major city, so that’s transport taken care of; and it’s all in bottles, so chances are you’ll be able to find this stuff again rather than being doomed to annoy your friends in the pub by pining for a long-lost festival-only porter with a strangely forgettable name. 26 Apr, Cafe Camino, York Pl, Edinburgh. Tickets £10, call 0131 667 2855.