Author Gaby Soutar

Barbra Streisand had her dog, Samantha, cloned. The results were Miss Violet and Miss Scarlet. She also has a third Coton de Tulear, Miss Fanny, created in a no-petri-dish-involved style. (I just wanted...

When I was at Edinburgh College of Art in the Nineties, our department took a trip to London. Among other things, we were going to visit the studio of an alumnus – the Italian Scots sculptor Eduardo...

  An editor once asked me to start rating restaurants out of five according to how dog-friendly they were.   Two points might mean, we allow them in, but there will be no petting permitted,...

After a nasty bout of sciatica, I don’t do standing in queues. The one at this new Bross Bagels, which also has outlets on Leith Walk, Portobello High Street and Queensferry Street, snaked out the door...

Some restaurants have a soft opening, this place had a very hard one. I passed it on the bus on the first night, and it was stowed out, with a red carpet and fire jugglers on the pavement. According to...

Never mind cabbage soup or grapefruit. One of the more esoteric weight loss plans of the Seventies was The Sexy Pineapple Diet by Inge and Sten Hegeler. It involved swapping regular food two days a week...

Call emergency book rescue, as the copy of Aran in its namesake cafe is worse than dog-eared. The hardback spine is cracked, the edges of its well-thumbed pages, once virginal white, are crumpled and...

"88 Dumbarton Road, please”. “That’s Two Fat Ladies”. This is how you play restaurant bingo with taxi drivers. They know all the city’s institutions – Rogano, “The Chip”, Gamba, La...

In Japan, they throw hanami festivals to celebrate the blooming of sakura. These plants are symbolic, as they represent the transience of life, and the Japanese phrase “mono no aware” – the awareness...

I’m the Christmas police. On the 1 December, I permit you to put up a few tasteful decorations. Don’t be like that neighbour who’s had a flashing-nosed Rudolph and a waving Santa in their window...