As an avid cafe-goer in Sydney, and with breakfast not included at our hotel, one of the first issues S and I tackled upon arrival in Edinburgh was – which cool cafe are we going to have breakfast at?! After scouring Urbanspoon and various food blogs, we made a shortlist and picked The Edinburgh Larder Cafe, pretty much because we were running late that morning and The Larder is just a 10 minute walk from the hotel!
We were immediately impressed with the cute, minimalist decor of the cafe/deli. To top it off, cute Scottish waiters brought us our menus and stayed for a chat about how a certain person’s bum wouldn’t fit on the window seat bench…many giggles and awkward laughs all round. The cafe is a branch of the Larder Bistro, also located in Edinburgh. The menu is small, but helpfully divided into Light, Healthy and Hungry meals. S and I both opted for ‘Hungry’ meals, but first we tried one of their highly recommended Homemade seasonal cordial (£1.50). We both went for the Elderflower and Strawberry – how can you resist that combination?! Australia really needs to get into Elderflower more…It was lighter than juice, but not overpoweringly sweet like many cordials I’ve had before (curse you school camps!). A beautiful, subtle way to start a meal.
S went for a standard fare of Scrambled eggs on toast with sausage (£5.95) – a meal that always delivers and does the job well. Also pretty hard to get wrong! To accompany the eggs (or is it meant for the sausage?) a big bottle of Stokes’ Brown Sauce was handed to us. What is this mysterious brown sauce?! I think the most commonly known version is HP sauce but as Wikipedia informs me, there doesn’t seem to be a set of typical ingredients. Love it all the same, and better than BBQ sauce in my opinion!
I had the mysteriously named Baked egg with cream and cheese (£5.25) which came with the disclaimer: Worth the 15 minute wait! In the scheme of things, 15 minutes isn’t ages so I happily agreed to that. I was sad to find that the baked egg really was only one singular egg, presented in a small ramekin. I could’ve easily had two of those! However the taste is quite heavy from the cream and cheese – probably not all that healthy either! But it was great to try something new, a different type of baked eggs than the tomatoey/capsicum sauce we are used to in Sydney. A tasty dish that is a little different – I’d recommend trying it if you’re at the Larder!
The lovely staff really made a difference to our breakfast. They gave us some tips on what to do for the day and off we went! It turned into a bit of a foodie day – visiting more cute cafes along the way.
The Edinburgh Larder Cafe
15 Blackfriars Street
Edinburgh EH1 1NB
http://www.edinburghlarder.co.uk/deli_cafe.php?page_id=3
