][1]A party of French cookery students and their teachers are on an exchange trip from Brittany to Scotland next week.
From Tuesday to Thursday, the young Breton gastronauts will travel around Scotland meeting cattle farmers, wholesale fishmongers, vegetable producers: all the good people who make Scotland such a great place to scoff.
Organised by the Institut français d’Ecosse and Frédéric Berkmiller, the chef proprietor of Edinburgh restaurants L’Escargot Blanc and L’Escargot Bleu, the trip includes visits to Tom Kitchin’s two Edinburgh restaurants and also to Sunnyside Farm, a traditional farm in Galloway that specialises in outdoor-reared, rare breed meat.
What’s in it for my stomach, you ask?
Well, at the lunch and dinner services of L’Escargot Bleu and L’Escargot Blanc on Friday 13 and Saturday 14 May, some of the Breton students will be cooking up special Breton menus under the watchful eye of their teachers and the restaurants’ chefs.
The rest of the Breton team will take over the Institut français on Randolph Crescent on Saturday afternoon for the ‘Meet the Chefs and Tastes of Brittany’ event.
Billed as afternoon of sweet and savoury and sweet crepes, visitors will meet the students who will teach how to make some famous and popular Breton specialties involving Scottish products.
They will also be able to bring a little piece of Brittany home with a complimentary booklet of recipes.
Tickets cost a fiver or £3 for concessions.