Frankenstein's Pub, Edinburgh

On our last night in Edinburgh, we wanted to go to a local pub for a fine meal. We try to go to the Greyfriars Bobby Pub. Alas, no tables were available and no one seemed like they'd be getting up soon.

We walked back up the street and the World Famous Frankenstein Pub was just opening its doors for dinner. We went in and found plenty of tables available. We sat in the corner by the fire. As the name suggests, much of the decor is centered around Mary Shelley's classic novel and the many movies it inspired. Many electric arcs streamed up the walls just like the equipment in the Boris Karloff classic. Some posters from more modern films, like from Hammer Studios and the Kenneth Brannagh version, can be found. In the corner is the monster himself.

Lucy was the only appropriately skeptical one!

Since this was the last night in Edinburgh, I felt I should try something of the local flavor, especially since we did mall food court fish and chips and chain restaurant Italian the two previous nights. First, I ordered a special drink off the menu, the Doctor Frankenstein.

Better than a zombie?

The drink was sweet and seductive and satisfying. But the real local flavor was the meal I ordered: haggis, neeps, and tatties.

I'm sure many readers have heard of haggis, which is infamous for being made up of "leftover" parts of the animal. I had one friend who used to say, "hoofs and eyeballs," which I don't think is true. On our previous trip to Scotland (six years ago), we had dinner with my cousin and her husband. He ordered us haggis, which we ate politely. The next morning, we told our bed and breakfast host that we had haggis. Her reply, "You can't get real haggis ever since they passed those laws!" Frankenstein's haggis wasn't too bad but is on the low end of tasty meat products.

What about the other parts of my dish? Neeps is basically mashed yellow turnips, which made a fine side dish. Tatties sounds really naughty, but is in fact merely mashed potatoes. They were well done.

We enjoyed the atmosphere and, as usual, Jacob liked the potty. It seemed like the pub was a bit of a club, but early on a Sunday night there wasn't much action. We did hear The Automatics' hit single Monster, which is famous for the lyric: "what's that coming over the hill is it a monster? is it a monster?" That was thematically nice to hear.

We headed back to our hotel for our final rest in Edinburgh. The next morning would be our escape, if we could navigate the downtown roads to get beyond the city limits. On the way south, we visited one more castle, a romantic, windswept, seaside fortress which would fit naturally nearby Whitby Abbey. But more on that in a future blog.