south side menu

On a couple of occasions we've had to base our selection of a place to go for a nice meal with Nicky's parents on places which either did not charge "Edinburgh prices" or serve anything too extremely spicy. Once this resulted in a completely horrible meal of overcooked boiled vegetables and overcooked greasy roast meats (whose emitted fluids were then apparently poured over the vegetables to get them to be all greasy to) just because it was cheap. Having eaten what passes for spicy in Ayr I can understand how something properly spicy might be a bit of a jump but the Mosque Kitchen, whilst slightly spicy is nowhere near as spicy as properly spicy. At a few quid for a giant bowlful it would also be unlikely to raise even the most frugal eyebrow. However, we were mildly wary about going there with the company present at the time just in case any part of it chose to confuse religion with geographic origin (often incorrect or confused) and culture or felt it appropriate to repeat the kind of emailed Daily Mail-reader-type joke they occasionally forward from one of their small-town-small-mind pals. We could either have not said anything, turned up there and hoped for the best, eating with one hand and keeping the other free to slap over a mouth if it looked like it was about to emit something dodgy or explained and warned in advance and hoped it wouldn't backfire. In the end we said "we're going to the Mosque Kitchen - it's outside but covered-over, cheap but safe and properly-cooked, prepared adjacent to but not served in a mosque and don't ask if they've any pork curry or bacon as they won't and nothing they make is too spicy for you and it's always really busy and it's really close to the theatre and our flat", countered the attempted affrontment with specific examples of exactly what we meant as unacceptable (one of which was freshly provided, nicely justifiying our concerns) and went and ate without anything happening.

The focus of the current visit was popping to the 50th anniversary tour of West Side Story, prompted by my dad's keen-ness for the show in its various forms and that he took my sister to the 40th anniversary tour when it and he were in London. I've probably seen the film all the way through at least once as the tab-removed VHS cassette recording of it was one of my dad's favourites but was living up here by the time he received both the boring and special edition DVDs for birthdays or christmasses. As the basic story is not original that was known and most of the songs are famous enough to have escaped as discrete entities it was far from completely surprising. A few things annoyed; the heavy breathing of the bloke immediately behind me, the occasional rustle and crinkle from his row-colleagues and the extremely poor-quality amplification of the singers (so badly-done I initially thought the voices were being overdubbed by people hidden in the orchestra pit) the only real problems.

Despite meaning to do so earlier in the week today was the first time I got up sufficiently early to pop out to meet parents for breakfast rather than just eventually meeting up somewhere at lunchtimeish when the past part of the day was past. I was only vaguely aware of suitably breakfast-providing entities in the general area in which they were staying (for some reason I;d been argued out of getting everyone to go to my favoured place even though the people opposing it didn't turn up) it turned out to be quite suitable and nice and quiet at that time of the morning, fortunately also meaning that no-one nicked my dad's bag in between him leaving it beside his seat and noticing it missing from his shoulder fifty metres along the road. The service was a little bit slow and the serving-entity seemed a bit vague and half-asleep (which always makes me fear that I'm going to end up with something other than that which I ordered with a resultant need to point this out and a resultant risk of the correct food having spit in it when it appears) but there's no need to rush when eating breakfast at a café on a day off. As part of a plan to attempt to reduce flap later in the day I followed them back to the hotel everyone was staying at to collect all their fancy clothes and shoes for the evening