Food Safari

Food and Drink tour of St Andrews 'Big 5'

On Saturday 10th of February, Tailend St Andrews and Eden Mill hosted our first ever Food Safari. Taking a group of fabulous foodies around the best local independents in St Andrews. Of course every dish was washed down with an incredible Eden Mill Gin. 
Along with eating and drinking the very best in St Andrews produce, we supported local charity Toby's Magical Journey. Who support local children and young people with cancer. 
Toby himself was diagnosed with leukaemia in December 2014 aged 9, which was when he decided he wanted to help other children who were in the same position as him. Toby's Magical Journey provides practical and financial support to families to help improve their quality of life. 
Alison and Richie Etheridge directors and parents of Toby's Magical Journey, gave an insight into how the money raised will help their organisation and of the incredible work they have already done. 
Please click here if you would like to find out more about Tobys Magical Journey. 

We kicked off at 4.45pm in the wonderful Playfair's restaurant on Playfair's Terrace. This is a gorgeous rustic restaurant, which instantly welcomes you in. Brother and sister duo Rachel and Duncan gave a fantastic experience for our first dish. 
​We had beautiful love gin and raspberries as a welcome drink. The delicate pink tones from the Love gin was pulled out from the raspberry. Making for a very pretty arrival.
This was then followed by Original gin and fresh orange. Playfair's had created a beautiful starter of cured venison, onion ash, sauerkraut, mushroom cream, rhubarb pickle and sourdough crisps. Which, the original gin and fresh cut orange paired together perfectly to create a truly delicious starter! They really pulled out all the stops, everything was fabulous. 

From Playfair's we then made our way over to Tailend. We had reserved the conservatory for our event, so we had a nice private space. For the main dish, our chefs decided to create a beautiful cod dish. As it was so cold and miserable outside we wanted something that would be nice and filling and warm everybody up! 
For the main we served up a generous sized grilled cod fillet, bacon jam, shallots, Jerusalem artichoke crisps and puree (much to the request of our guests, we also had sharing bowls of  our famous chips!).  
We paired this to Eden Mills beautiful oak gin. We chose to garnish this gin with sprigs of Thyme and fresh Apple. We froze our garnishes into ice cubes giving the flavours time to infuse with the gin as the ice melts.
The warming oak from the gin paired perfectly to the incredibly tasty, smoky bacon jam. The cod was cooked to perfection, almost melting in the mouth. The warmth and smoky flavour from the bacon jam really brought this dish to life! The artichoke crisps also gave the dish some different dimension. 
​Altogether (and entirely unbiased) an incredible main course for this event. 

From the Tailend we made the short trip to Luvians ice cream parlour, where Archie gave a great talk on the life and origins of gin and also talked about their own specially designed Graduate gin, that they have created with Eden Mill (available to purchase from Luvians Bottleshop). 

All our guests very much enjoyed Archies hilarious and informative talk of how us Brits all came to love gin. Our guests had the choice of trying the Graduate gin or the Eden Mills Shipwreck IPA. Most preferred to try the Graduate Gin. After being shown the perfect way to serve the gin, we were then shown how the lemon grass and lime garnishes enhanced the flavour and what other garnishes would work well. 

​You can also create your own gin at Eden Mills Blendworks. Located in the Russacks Hotel in
St Andrews, they have set up their very own blendworks master class. Where you can get the chance to create your very own unique gin that you get to take home. 

For the final foodie course we stumbled our way to the bottom of South Street to the famous Jannettas Gelataria. The guys over at Jannettas really pulled out the magic for their dessert course! They had created a one-off chocolate bomb for all our guests on the safari.
A gorgeous white chocolate shell, which you then melted with hot chocolate sauce. The shell then opens up like a flower to show art of the blend Eden mill Whisky gelato & orange mascapone sherbet sorbet topped with homemade granola!! This was a fantastic treat which everyone loved!! 
​Along with this amazing dessert they served Eden Mills lemon and raison liqueur. At 20% ABV just a small taster of this liqueur really packed a punch. A truly tasty feather in Eden Mills cap!
​Eden Mill recommend trying it  over ice topped with soda, a dash of bitters and a lemon wedge-Superb.

For our final stop on the safari we took a walk to the Adamson Cocktail bar. 
Here we were treated to two fabulous cocktail creations; Gypsy eyes and Black Rose! Both were amazing but Black rose definitely won everyone over! 
Gypsy eyes had a strong Aperol flavour and definitely put some fire in your belly!! The Black Rose had a much more delicate floral flavour. The burnt thyme also gave a fabulous dramatic look. 

We loved this event and considering it was the first time we have ever organised something like this, everything ran (almost) exactly to plan. We would love to organise another one... possibly later this year... so keep an eye on our website and social media pages for further updates!! 
Big thank you to everyone one of the 'BIG 5' for joining in on the Safari and of course to Eden Mill's Steve for all his hard work, would  not have been the same without him! 
And of course massive thank you to the guys at Tablaro for their amazing blog and fabulous photos. See their blog here.
Photo Cred: Tablaro

--- Here's to the next event #LoveTailend