Posts Tagged ‘Brunch’

Nanu Maps: Breakfast

Breakfast

Hi Nanu Friends. Sorry for the hiatus. We’ve been searching the city for the best breakfast joints around and there’s only so many fry ups one can eat all at once. But never fear, Ellie, Elyse and new Nanu Maps contributor, Morgan have found the best places to grab breakfast in Edinburgh when you don’t really fancy an Egg McMuffin.


View Nanu Maps: Breakfast in a larger map

Snax

118 Buccleuch Street /15 West Register Street
Mon-Fri 07:00-16:00, Sat 07:00-18:00, Sun 08:00-18:00

Just a stone’s throw away from George Square library, Snax is usually occupied by bleary eyed students soothing their hangovers. And with full breakfasts starting at a mere £2.50 it’s hard not to see the appeal. Snax is a classic greasy spoon with big portions, small prices and actually really good food. Tea comes in big mugs and staff are friendly and fast. Buccleuch Street is much more likely to find you a table, but there’s another small branch just behind Princes Street, perfect for a bacon roll between shopping. Snax is also open really, really early so you can grab some cheap and delicious fuel for the day first thing. The comfort food extends to lunchtime with burgers, chips, baked potatoes and chilli; also very, very cheap and delicious. Snax is probably the only place I can abide which uses a quirky letter ‘x’ in its name.

Toast

146 Marchmont Road
Mon-Sat 10:00-22:00, Sun 10:00-17:00

Ideal for a sophisticated Sunday brunch, Toast even makes its own baked beans. It’s a friendly wee café located in the heart of Marchmont, slightly more expensive than your average but it makes up for it in quality and originality. The traditional fry up is given a bit of TLC and its these little differences which make brunch a little bit special. There are good veggie options available, a whole alternative fry up is on offer which includes haggis! And if you don’t fancy the full fry up, there’s filled croissants, French toast and scrambled eggs. Weekend Brunch is also particularly popular as it has a few extras like Eggs Benedict and open sandwiches on offer. A great place to take your mum or meet your pals. If you’re going at the weekend, I’d arrive early or reserve a table. It’s a popular wee establishment and the best in the area.

The Abbey

65 South Clerk Street
Mon-Sat: 10am-1am; Sun 10.30am-1am

Nanu has previously recommended the Abbey as a top location for real beer in Edinburgh, but when you’ve had quite a few ales the night before, the Abbey also functions as one of the best places to go for a cheap and cheerful fry up the morning after. Open from 10am with a cosy atmosphere, welcoming smell and a few locals nursing an early Tenants over the Daily Sport, their prize deal is a cooked “Big Breakfast” with a pot of tea or coffee for just £3.99. Also on offer is a Scottish breakfast – effectively your classic full breakfast with added haggis and white pudding. For those who want a little less grease in the morning, there are also rolls, omelettes and waffles on offer, each with a selection of fillings and toppings. The perfect way to deal with a hangover.

The Haven

8/9 Anchorfield
Mon-Fri 8.00-17.00, Sat-Sun 9.00-17.00

At 8/9 Anchorfield, Edinburgh, you’ll find the Haven. With bright coloured walls and knick-knackery hanging above and sitting on shelves it sounds like somewhere your granny might go but the Haven is not over cluttered or blinding, it just welcomes you in and cheers you up. Offering a simple but substantial breakfast menu it has the regular fry ups and rolls but, importantly, an added delight to the classic breakfast is the colourful and mismatching pretty cups, saucers and plates of Victorian style. If the traditional breakfast isn’t what you’re looking for then the array of delicious cakes might take your fancy even in the morning. A little out the way from Leith Walk and unless you’re a huge walking enthusiast, a bus is definitely necessary from Edinburgh but well worth it – it really is quite the haven from buzz of the city where you can enjoy a long, peaceful breakfast.

Kilimanjaro

126 Nicolson Street
Mon-Fri 7.30-8.30, Sat-Sun 8.00-8.00

Kilimanjaro is situated in the centre of Newington in Edinburgh. At lunchtime Kilimanjaro is heaving with students making the morning a perhaps forgotten alternative when visiting the café. Yet it offers a range of breakfast delights including the fry up and eggs benedict which challenges the lunchtime favourite, the sweet chilli chicken Panini. Milkshakes and fruit juice are also on the menu at price which is keeping with the area. The large glass window brings natural light into the café even on the dreariest Edinburgh day but it also allows you to people watch and relax whilst eating. Open early Kilimanjaro is the perfect meeting place for having breakfast with friends but you would never feel out of place if choosing to visit alone. Kilimanjaro offers a casual atmosphere with friendly staff always on the go and after eating there once it is likely you become a regular.

Record Store Days

collection

I bought my first vinyl record online – to some extent, a terribly ironic sign of the times, but also a sign of Shetland’s remoteness. It was Elle Milano’s ‘Swearing’s for Art Students’ EP, angsty teenage indie obscurity on limited edition red vinyl. I got number 455 of 500.

My first experience of buying vinyl in a shop was in OneUp in Aberdeen, which sadly closed at the end of January this year.  I bought a handful of 7” singles, including some Maxïmo Park and ¡Forward, Russia!, each 99p. I felt very, very cool. If I hadn’t been a 14 year old girl, I might have tried to strike up conversation with the shop owner, and if I hadn’t lived a sea away I would have been back a little more often.

Since moving to Edinburgh, I have had some great finds in record shops across the city, from taking a gamble on saxophonist Illinois Jacques at Record Shak to things I immediately knew I would cherish, such as a lovely gatefold edition of ‘Beggars Banquet’ alongside the Grease soundtrack from VoxBox. My local record shop, however, will always be Clive’s.

I never bought vinyl in Clive’s. By the time I came on the scene it was first cassettes, and then CDs – too early for the record resurgence. I remember getting Marvin and Tamara’s Groove Machine on tape, which I still own. What do you mean you don’t remember them? It was the summer of ’99, baby:

I remember my mum and nan discussing in hushed tones whether it was appropriate for me to spend a record token on Wheatus’ debut album because it had a parental advisory sticker. I never did get any more than the radio edit of Teenage Dirtbag. I remember going in with my first proper boyfriend to pick up a copy of Pulp’s ‘Different Class’ so we could discover it together. Cheesy, but so began a love affair that has spanned years (I am of course referring to myself and Jarvis Cocker et al, not the boyfriend). I also remember going in during my heavy Glasgow indie, Domino Records phase and tentatively asking a cheery shop assistant if they had a copy of Sons and Daughters’ ‘Love the Cup’. They did.

Clives

Like OneUp, Clive’s also closed, back in 2011, having served Shetland’s population since the 1970s. Of course I played a part in the closure; we all did, and we all continue to do so. The convenience of online shopping and especially of downloading cannot be understated. As well as this, music services such as Spotify – on which I do have a paid account – mean that you can listen to pretty much anything you’ve ever wanted to, and plenty that you didn’t even know you wanted to, at the touch of a button. I use it as background noise when I’m focusing on other tasks. I download songs from the Top 40 that get stuck in my head so that I can play them to death on my walk to university, and then delete them the next time I reorganise my iPod (limited storage you see! It’s not like a physical shelf where you can just perch case upon case, until one day they all fall down and you think ‘maybe I should get a bigger shelf’).

I would hesitate to say that I treat these downloads as disposable. That seems to be unfair to the artists in question, though to some extent that is always how pop music will be consumed. Possibly more appropriate would be to say that I have no connection to the downloading process. I sit on my bed and I click.

I could count the number of music downloads I can vaguely remember carrying out on one hand. Even fewer online CD purchases. There’s no interaction. There’s no story.

People, righteous vinyl junkies, always point out that in a record shop, you can meet like-minded people. You can take risks based on what they recommend to you, and hopefully you can do the same for them. This is absolutely true, especially if you can get over your fear of looking terribly uncool and uneducated – top tip: throwing yourself in at the deep end and buying the most embarrassing thing you can find will blow that right out of the way.

But it’s also a way to bond with people you already know, discovering music together, sharing your tastes and laughing at each other when you almost accidentally purchase some Scandinavian screamo/thrash/metal ‘cause it had a hilarious picture of a cat on the front. Just goes to show you can never judge a record by its sleeve, or something.

recordz

Music sharing services online have tried to incorporate this sharing facility, and to some extent they probably are effective. However, realistically, how many times have you seen via Facebook that a friend was listening to something on Spotify, or seen their top 3 last.fm artists of the week published on Twitter and thought “hmm, I must tune into some of that”? The experience of heading to a record shop with a friend is a very difficult one to replicate, just as reading in 140 characters that someone you know thinks a film was fairly good is never going to have the same effect as a drawn out discussion with them about it over a couple of pints.

Record Store Day is a fantastic thing to support because record stores are fantastic things – livelihoods – worth supporting. Vinyl is pretty trendy right now: by all means, scrum on down to your nearest emporium today and scramble with the other hipsters for that special edition release. You’ll certainly have a story to tell, and I hope the rush you get will keep you going back. Record shops are worth supporting, but what’s more, they need supporting. Following the demise of Clive’s, Shetland is lacking a dedicated music outlet – and probably always will. On the other hand, Edinburgh’s independent record shop scene appears to be rather densely populated; something for the city to be proud of. If we continue to frequent and nurture these shops, they will continue to give back – and what’s not to like about that?

Interested in exploring Edinburgh’s independent music shop scene? Check out our Nanu Maps: Record Shops to find out more.