“Live to eat, or eat to live?” - No matter what your answer is, you wouldn’t say no to café hopping, would you? Since one of my Malaysian sisters from the School of Biological Sciences is graduating this month and leaving Edinburgh soon for good, we decided to visit as many cafés in Edinburgh as we could in a day and have a good time (with good food definitely 
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It was a lovely Sunday. The weather was in our favour. We started our day with breakfast at the infamous J.K. Rowling's writing spot: The Elephant House. Started in 1995 and strategically located at George IV Bridge, The Elephant House has made itself reputable as one of the best tea and coffee houses in Edinburgh. Their goats cheese and Portobello mushrooms on toast is worth a try! It was really a good relaxing time exploring the menu.
We then headed on to Peter’s Yard, Quartermile - a Swedish bakery which is only 10 minutes walking from The Elephant House. Using naturally fermenting sourdough and the finest, natural ingredients, the most recommended and best-seller is their crispbread (although to be honest, that was my first time eating crispbread). I myself still prefer the savoury scone instead and hot mocha to complete the meal. Chatting over coffee and scone, we bonded over how much we missed our families back home.
Next in the list was The Chocolate Tree in Bruntsfield. We could have walked but we chose not to because we are entitled for unlimited bus rides with Ridacard hence we hopped on to Lothian Bus Service 24 heading towards Brunstfield. It is a wee shop right by the main road. As we stepped into the shop, we were captivated by the ambience and the cocoa smell. Being a chocolate addict, I would never say no to chocolates and The Chocolate Tree have all sorts of them – artisan chocolates (hand crafted chocolates), organic chocolate bars, chocolate spreads, chocolate tarts, and cakes – it doesn’t end there. You really have to visit this place! If you are craving for macarons or ice creams, they have them as well!
Though we were bloated with chocolate, we can never get enough of them! We then went to The Caffeine Drip in West End. It is a South African café that offers soups, paninis/sandwiches, baguettes, wraps and salads – what you could typically get in any café but what makes it special is how the owners managed to cater to every appetite from the bold to traditional to meat lovers, vegetarians and vegans. Massive selections of hot chocolate made you indecisive. Known to be fickle myself, I kept changing my mind between mint hot chocolate (served with After Eight) and orange hot chocolate. I was never a fan of orange flavoured chocolates and I had no idea why I opted for it at The Caffeine Drip. Perhaps I just couldn’t resist the strong smell of citrus!
After spending more than half the day café hopping, having milkshake would be the best way to end the glutton adventure. Shakeaway at Rose Street was our last stop. Offering hundreds flavours of milkshake, it was never easy to decide. Since we already had too much caffeine and cocoa, we picked butterscotch and banana, where Shakeaway gave the name ‘Teresa’ for the flavour and being sisterly love, we shared a large size of Teresa that evening.
I’m definitely looking forward to going back to all the cafés and have other great food that they offer in store. Edinburgh is not only known for its dynamic literary life in the present which has led to it being declared as the first UNESCO City of Literature in 2004, the cafés in Edinburgh in fact have inspired many legendary authors of best-selling novels. Who knows, by writing your dissertation in one of the cafés would lead you to writing your masterpiece and becoming a public figure in your field
June 2015.
June 2015.
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