Author Gaby Soutar

  In the greenhouse, the sofas may be empty, but apricot blossoms have appeared, like white lace cuffs, on the edges of branches.   The staff pollinated these earlier in the year with goose...

  My sister should have called her baby Zeppole.   While pregnant she got hooked on this venue’s cinnamon and sugar-powdered doughnuts. Anyway, my nephew isn’t named after an Italian...

  It seems ages since I had a list of new restaurants to review.   I suppose that scrap of paper is still on my desk at work, alongside the increasingly vacant 2020 diary and my mummified...

  I was planning a mini-break to Athens about now.   Luckily, something stopped me from booking those pre-lockdown flights a few months ago.   Who cares, holidays are overrated,...

By the time you read this, Alby’s might be open again. When I visited this sandwich place, a couple of weeks ago, we were in pre-lockdown limbo and it had switched to takeaway and delivery within EH6 mode...

‘It’s Kaori! I can see her!” She comes up our path with a paper bag full of food, rings the doorbell and hands the swag over to my husband. As I have met the owner of six-year-old Harajuku Kitchen...

  My name-that-tune rendition of Baker Street’s instrumental break isn’t going well.   Nellie the Elephant? Coronation Street theme tune?   Unfortunately, the autopilot on my...

You’ll find a cauldron of bats and a prudence of vicars in this new venue’s radius. I’m thinking of ecclesiastical collective nouns, since there’s a congregation of four churches on Edinburgh’s...

My driving instructor chain-smoked menthol cigarettes and barely spoke. I blame her for the teenage me failing my driving test three times, then giving up permanently. Still, I may not have wheels, but...

The kids talk about YOLO (you only live once) and FOMO (fear of missing out). As a middle aged person, I’m more into POMO (pleasure of missing out). There’s something extremely satisfying about...