A Day to Savour at Summerhall

Savour

The Summerhall arts space, in the old Dick Vet, has established itself as an absolute gem of a place, playing host to all manner of intriguing events, exhibitions and shows.

The middle Sunday of June saw it transformed into a food-lovers paradise called Savour, a festival of food arranged across several of their major rooms, showcasing some of Edinburgh and Scotland’s finest restaurants, cafes and producers.

Cullen skink

Somewhere around 600 people were in attendance making it a rather overwhelming prospect on arrival. A friendly wave from the folks from Field, followed by a terrific espresso from Machina Espresso soon had me settled in to enjoy the show.

Rooms were split across different aspects of food and drink: there was the main course hall; a pudding hall; a cheese room; a beer lab; and a cider tent.

Ham hock terrine from Field

Each stall provided little samplers for free, then more substantial offerings or items to take home and enjoy, all of which were very reasonably priced.

The range and quality on offer was almost too great to cover, but we did particularly enjoy the terrine from Field, the wine from Bacco, the white port from Appellation Wines, and the smoked salmon from George Campbell & Sons.

The culinary highlight was the Cullen skink from Union of Genius, which was smoked before our very eyes, using an elaborate looking contraption. This was matched excellently with sherry from Vino.

In the beer lab, we had a very instructional time with the folks from Queen Margaret Unversity’s Gastronomy course, then tasted some fine fined and unfined beer from the diamond geezers at Pilot.

A little stop at the cider tent, a waft through the heady butteriness of pudding hall, then a Hendrick’s cocktail to cap it all put the seal on what had been a rather fabulous afternoon.

Huge congratulations go to Sharon from Bite and Nikki from Convivium Wines for organising the whole shebang. Hilary from My Monkfish did a sterling job on the social media side of things, too.

We very much hope that this event returns again next year, if not before, as it really was an excellent platform for interaction between punters and exhibitors, all of whom shared overflowing enthusiasm for good food. We enjoyed it very much.