This week’s book features yours truly, and also Cafe St Honoré, but before my time. Edinburgh on a Plate is a great book (of course I would say that) featuring a genuinely good collection of recipes from Edinburgh chefs from about 25 years ago. At that time I was working at the Atrium restaurant in the building the houses the Traverse Theatre. I’d been there about a year in 1999 when the book came out. It was a great place to work and very cool.

Cafe was also featured, with its previous owners Chris and Gill Colverson, who are very old friends. Not much has changed at Cafe since then, but Atrium no longer exists, and I do look a tad older. There are some wonderful pictures of Cafe, and I love reminiscing and re-reading the stories from the other contributors.

Martin Irons of Martins restaurant is in there, and Roy Brett when he was at Malmaison (before Ondine). Even the late Gary Rhodes when he had a restaurant on Rose Street. And there are many more characters with some lovely recipes. My food has moved on slightly since those days, as it does with time, but the photography from Alan Donaldson does it proud.

The book was put together by Ferrier Richardson, a great chef who had some fabulous restaurants in Bearsden and Glasgow and was an inspiration to many (and still is). He now has The East End Fox in Glasgow, and I was always a huge admirer of his food.

Someone recently reminded me that I’m in this book, whilst they chuckled about how young I look. They then explained that they discovered the book in a charity shop. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not… But interestingly, the dishes Chris was cooking at Cafe back then aren’t that far off what we’re cooking today, confirming that Cafe St Honoré is indeed - timeless!