Scotland -- yes that Scotland, the country with the haggis -- got the Frank Bruni treatment yesterday in the Times.It wasn't really a food piece -- more of a "isn't the countryside beautiful" sort of travel piece -- but the Brun includes a line which is an inherent contradiction in terms:
"The Three Chimneys is the French Laundry of Scotland"...
Now, I haven't been back to Scotland in a good decade (and they say in the article that things improved about a decade ago, when Max Gross came and left) but the very idea of a French Laundry of Scotland seems like a joke. The McDonald's in Jackson Heights would be like French Laundry compared to the crap the Scots put on their plate. (Hey, McDonald's is a Scottish name, right?)
I prefer to think of it the way Mike Meyers described it in So I Married an Axe Murderer: "I believe most Scottish cuisine is based on a dare."
