Edinburgh
 

This website has been so helpful. I leave for Paris on Wednesday so trying to get all my info together since I won't have a computer there. I'm also going to Edinburgh.Have gotten the idea that alot of the shops on the Royal Mile and Princes Street are real touristy, and that you can get better buys and nice souvenirs on other streets. Does anyone know the names of shops or streets where I could go to shop? Also, how do haggis taste? What are they made of? I also wanted to ask about foie de gras - I read where it's duck liver. I really can't stand any kind of liver and wondered if it has a different taste from pate or beef liver. Didn't want to order it and spend the money if it has any resemblance to the liver I've eaten.

The full name is pate de foie gras - or paste of the fat liver - and can be duck or goose - there are many differnt types of pates with different textrues, herb, etc. And yes it tastes like pate (sorry I can't do an accent). Haggis is singular - not plural. I did not taste it and the smell alone was enought to convince me that I didn't want to - this has become more a curiosity than a real food. I don;t know the exact recipe but I understand it involves oatmeal stuffed into the intestines(?) of a sheep.

The shops on Princes Street and Roayl Mile seemed fine in large part - not tacky on the whole. I would think they are the perfect place to buy souvenirs - that's what we did - although perhaps you would get better buys on regular purchases (cashmere sweaters etc) in other areas of the city. It's hard to say without knowing exactly what you are interested in buying.

Well, I think I'll skip the oatmeal in sheep's intestines and the duck liver. I have alot of people to buy souvenirs for so wanted to find something inexpensive to bring back to them. I like the tartan plaid look, the shortbread tins, crystal, cashmere (depends on the price).I will also be in London. Candy especially chocolate.

The High Street- the Miles- is VERY touristy. Prince Street is for real people; but you'll find good quality shopping in Victoria Street and Great Bow- down from the top of the High Street on the South side; and in the cross streets that go north from Princes Street; and in George Street; and in the cluster of streets around the west end of Princes Street; and in Stockbridge.

as a a veggie, I find it hard to recommend haggis, but i HATE it when people discrd it out of hand without trying it. There's a little veggie restaurant with great cooking, in a side street of the High Street, called Black Bo's and it has veggy haggis, which I guarantee you will love.

You can get foie gras, not made into pate- in my bit of southern France that's far more comon than the pate itself. It's considered a great delicacy, and is totally unlike school dinner liver.

We tried haggis when we visited. It tastes sort of like corned beef hash...and as long as you tell yourself thats waht it is insteadof focusing on what it really is, its decent. I do think its an aquired taste though. BTW it is not intestines...it is other insides cooked with oatmeal and spices in the sheeps stomach...but when it was served it asnt in a little pouch like i expected. Honestly, if you didnt know what it was you would most definitely try it.

If you think about it, Haggis is just a sort of oatmeal sausage. Sausage casings are intestines, Haggis' is a stomach.

I always smile when folks get all yechhey about "its a sheep's stomach for god's sake". Well then, don't eat traditionally made sausages either . . . . . .

I suppose there are a few things that smell awful & taste good; or vice versa- like coffee. But my nose usually knows. How about a bite off someone else's plate?

Give pate de foie gras and haggis a try. Expand your horizons. Live on the wild side!!
I'm a fussy eater but tried both and enjoyed both. Will not hesitate to order again the next time I am over there.

I've eaten both pate and haggis and really liked them both. (If you eat sausage ever, haggis is really no different.) I strongly recommend not discarding something out of hand so quickly. What if you actually like it??? What's the harm?

I got an appetizer of haggis at Deacon Brodie's pub on the Royal Mile. And I had pate on a ride in the Loire valley, passing some farms that had signs up and stopped in for a taste!

Be adventurous!

Haggis isn't really predominantly oatmeal - that would make it a white pudding. The oatmeal is used as a "filler" between the main meat ingredients, which is basically offal (liver, kidneys, etc.) I think haggis is one of those foods which you either love or hate - I love it, my wife hates it. I especially like it deep fried in batter with chips after a night in the pub.....

Foie gras is lovely - either have it flash fried or in a pate. Just don't think about how it is made.

Yes but Keith, do they fling the Haggis into the same oil as the fish? Oy.

Chip shops fry everything in the same fat: fish, spam fritters, beefburgers, deep-fried Mars Bars, battered sausages. Haggis is no exception.

In much of Northern Britain, BTW, (and that means everywhere I've tried in Scotland) the fat is beef dripping, NOT oil.

Unlike, say andouillettes or Irish drisheen, haggis very rarely tastes "gamey" or even very innard-y.

Don't be a wimp. Just try it. If you don't like it - believe me: many, many much worse things will happen to you

I wonder how many people who refuse to even taste haggis because of its ingredients have no problem at all eating hot dogs. Atleast you know what's in the haggis.

No disrespect flanneruk, but I formerly frequented a shop where the fish had its own fry basin (yes, probably beef dripping). I think it was a high-volume setup sold to places where there was too much business for one frying tub-basin-thingy but where the owner had elected to segregate the fish from the chicken (which often tasted like fish anyway, due to the birds being fed fishmeal during their lives) as well as the haggi, black puddings, <i>pizzas</i> (ugh) etc.

Gardyloo:

You eat at classier joints than I do.

When I lived in the UK I learned REAL fast which butchers sold free range or grain fed poultry after tasting cheaper fishmeal fed birds.

I love fish, but a fish flavoured drumstick is not a taste sensation I care to re-live . . . .

I'm with flanneruk on this - the chippy I visit chucks everything into the one fryer - fish, chicken, the lot.

Personally it's the deep fried pizzas which get me too - as if they're not fatty enough already, we dip them in batter and deep fry them - ugh!

By the way, chip shops in Edinburgh won't ask if you want salt and vinegar, instead you're offered &quot;salt and sauce&quot; (or, as comedian Greg Proops pointed out, usually shortened to &quot;salnsauce.&quot;) This sauce is a strange brown concoction - I think it's a mixture of brown sauce and vinegar. Yuk, yuk, yuk!

The &quot;salnsauce&quot; has marvelous restorative powers on Jan. 1 or 2 when taken with you-know-what as a beverage.

Give me salnsauce on my chips (or chups, to pronounce it with a proper Edinburgh accent) over vinegar anytime!

Wild haggis is, in my opinion, much superior to the domestic variety. Sadly, however, the wild haggis has been hunted almost to extinction and can only be found in the remotest parts of the Highlands.