Stepping through the doors of popular Dundee cafe, The Selkie, Murray has been enjoying the novelty of dining out again.
It’s such a great feeling to be out and about again although I’ve visited so many restaurants recently that the data on my fitness tracker just scaled a red zone hinting at an impending seizure – such is the excitement caused by staring at someone other than my cat Simone as I eat dinner.
Weeks after the end of prohibition it’s still such a novelty to walk through a door that isn’t your own and have someone else bring you food – and now wine too! And you can eat it with your friends!
This still feels like such an outrageously decadent concept where a block of silken tofu served on a pillow of raw tripe might seem like Bacchus himself had sent it to your table with a note saying “enjoy”.
An epicurean experience
If it were possible to have a vat of wine simultaneously hotwired into the brain, leaving the mouth free to eat, sing, make a mean moue and tell jokes, I would buy shares in that epicurean experience immediately.
Surely there must be a drip-feed system we can be hooked up to that dispenses a chilled, buttery Chardonnay straight to the cortex so the action of raising a glass to your lips becomes superfluous and so very 2020?
Let’s be honest, a panacea to keep we masses under control would be just the ticket right now – maybe that wonderful humanitarian Priti Patel would know, given her past history as a spin doctor lobbying for the tobacco industry and working in corporate affairs for a massive alcohol company.
Come on the Pritster! Throw we common people a line, a scrap or even a gnarled old dog-end in these trying times when a 4am hammering and a van outside your door doesn’t always mean the milk, the rolls and The Courier have arrived.
Recent events have reminded us that no man is an island, despite Boris Johnson and Priti’s bulldozing attempts to make all of us feel like we’re all entirely of ourselves.
How shameful is it that this island they’re creating is one that discourages visitors, other cultures and those seeking asylum, as if a deranged Enid Blyton had taken over the running of UK PLC? Thankfully we Scots are made of more expansive, inclusive girders.
Pandemic
The simple fact is that the pandemic has reminded us just how much we need people and each other – never have I valued family and friends more.
As a teenage misanthrope I used to cling to philosophers like Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, who famously wrote that hell is other people – and Sartre had it easy because he never had to queue to get in to Primark.
The simple fact is that the pandemic has reminded us just how much we need people and each other – never have I valued family and friends more.
After such a long period of solitary confinement going out is indeed the new staying in, although sadly the end result is inches away from staying thin.
I have to confess there’s been a lot of eating performed by me recently and yet so little food has been produced from my cooker that I’m thinking of turning it into a repository for my trainer collection – a bit like a tenement Carrie Bradshaw, or a Paris Hilton plonked in the “Hulltoon”.
Kaye Adams
Only the salutary experience of listening to the eternally doleful Kaye Adams discussing calorie counting on Radio Scotland could stop me turning into Billy Bunter these past few weeks.
Adams, who is fluent in many languages but majors in Schadenfreude, brings a sense of impending doom to any topic she tackles and would be sure to bring any party to a dreggy, desultory close before it had even begun.
Nevertheless, her show about the rising obesity problem in Scotland did strike a chord with me, albeit a chord this piper of tristesse has played many times.
This subject of fatness isn’t uncharted territory for the wafer-thin maitresse of melancholy. In Feb, right in the middle of a lockdown, Adams was asking whether it was time for Scotland to get a grip on its weight problem. Clue – it wasn’t, a fact I’d have confirmed to her had I not had my snout permanently buried in fudge doughnuts from Fisher & Donaldson for the whole of that miserable month.
In July 2012 Adams was asking if it’s OK to tell your overweight child they’re fat. By 2017 she was featuring a French chef advocating serving snails and fish heads in Scotland’s schools to help combat child obesity and that same year she had Tam Fry from the National Obesity Forum suggesting that parents should reward their children in order to get them to eat more vegetables.
This woman – this THIN woman – has form and you can bet that on a slow news day when even the colonial might of BBC Scotland can’t come up with a chink in Nicola Sturgeon’s armour, then Kaye Adams will slink in to tell us all we’re too large.
First big meal out
A brief respite from the gloom was provided by local Newport chef Jamie Scott who reminded us that sometimes joy can take the place of a Weight Watchers book and that fine dining was a treat that might perhaps make us feel happier without resorting to guilty self-flagellation every time we eat a vol au vent (this paraphrasing of the wise words of Mr Scott is entirely my own, by the way).
Of course, as always, nothing was really resolved by this endless mithering, apart from me deciding never to pay my licence fee for this nonsense again.
My first big meal out was in the beautiful courtyard of Timberyard in Edinburgh, one of my favourite restaurants in the country, and also one many of us can now travel to. Timberyard is perfection and only the fact that it’s so hard to get into would stop me from foregoing food for six days in order to eat there for one. It’s that good.
The food is totally exquisite, and so reasonably priced it feels like a steal (I know this is all relative and if you’re currently surviving using food banks then you might think I’m a completely out of touch prat, but I hope that’s not the case).
Although I have never exercised such restraint, it would be perfectly possible to eat at Timberyard on some bread, pickles and salad, hand over £11 or so, tip the excellent and hugely glamorous staff and walk out the door feeling that the world is a mightily better place.
We ate rather more than that although we did start simply, enjoying a tomato and lovage salad (£5) which paired excellent tomatoes with one of my favourite herbs to dazzling effect. Together with some sourdough, crowdie, ramson and sesame (£3) that was worth the price of admission alone.
Other faultless dishes we tried included beef tartare, scurvy grass, cured yolk, shallot, mustard (£7), a spectacular glazed duck with radicchio, hazelnut and orange (£9.50), a historic (RIP Michael Winner) poached sole and mussels, cider, potato and smoked cod’s roe (£10) and asparagus with hen’s egg, goat butter, morel, hemp and sweet cicely which was £19.
Some crushed heritage potatoes, brown butter, crème fraiche and herbs were £6 and bountiful in terms of portion size and flavour. An ace gooseberry sorbet and elderflower dessert freshened the palate before some excellent British cheeses served with fennel crackers and chutney (£11) brought the meal to a stunning close.
Should you be planning a trip to Edinburgh I heartily recommend Timberyard as a restaurant where great food and service combine with reasonable pricing to create an experience that is peerless. Some local Tayside restaurants charging £18 and upwards for a plate of unappealing gnocchi might take note of restaurants like this, both in their pricing and their lack of vegetarian options.
The Selkie
One happy discovery for vegetarians and carnivores alike is The Selkie, a lovely little café on Dundee’s Exchange Street which I just discovered but, as ever, then realised I was the last man at the party. What a delight this place is!
Firstly, it looks good in a relaxed, easy way. This site has been an odd one because I first noticed it when it was the excellent T-Ann Cake, a place I loved. When it became Simpsons I went off it, disappointed by charmless service and unmemorable food. Now, however, the brilliant Selkie is already one of my favourite cafes in Dundee.
A first visit with my chef sister provided an excellent breakfast for us both, greatly enhanced by the friendly and charmingly-professional waitress Lauralee. My smoky chorizo hash with notably good free-range poached eggs and chilli (£7.50) was a well-cooked delight while Elaine’s full breakfast was £9.50 and equally great. We both coveted the warm croissant filled with cinnamon cream cheese, honey and fresh berries (£5) on a neighbouring table although I would have been very happy with a bacon roll at £3.50.
A return visit for a solo lunch the day after proved equally lovely when I greatly enjoyed a bruschetta with broad beans, tomato and feta (£5) followed by a delicious cheesecake.
Sitting at a window seat in this gloriously welcoming space, it was heartening to see it bustling and filled with energy.
Owner Kelly was there and it was obvious from her demeanor that she’s intensely proud of this place which is family owned, family run and obviously built on love. There is a lot to be proud of here.
Kelly said: “There isn’t a masterplan. I went into the space to buy a dishwasher and actually bought the shop because I wanted to cook and bake and make a community. Our ethos is that we only serve what we would give our most loved family.”
I loved The Selkie and will be returning for their tapas night very soon.
This will become my go-to place for a simple, good lunch in the middle of Dundee. A hit!
Timberyard, 10 Lady Lawson St, Edinburgh EH3 9DS. T: 0131 221 1222. E: eat@timberyard.co
The Selkie, 27 Exchange St, Dundee, DD1 3DJ. T: 01382 698210. E: www.theselkie.scot
