Edinburgh - a food and drink paradise (between shows)

Epic. In the last 1.5 days we have seen the following shows:
Shappi Khorsandi (charming and enjoyable rather than belly laughs)
Quasimodo (intense, 15 minutes too long, and quite funny in retrospect even though it wasn't meant to be)
Daniel Kitson (oh. my. god. life changing. kill for a ticket. laughed 157 times and wept 8 times, the last time in a slightly uncontrolled manner. I never weep in anything, not Bambi, not the Neighbours wedding, nothing.)
Susan Calman in conversation with others from the festival (funny, charming, relaxing after Kitson)
Dig for Victory (hmmm. There's always one. Some nice ideas, executed as if for their mates after the pub, D- for effort)
Bo Burnham (dumbfoundingly brilliant, slightly uncomfortable, don't want to mention how young he is but it's part of the package. When he went off on the Hamlet soliloquy I actually didn't want him to stop.)
Idiots of Ants (that's more like it! Clever, fun, and they had put a lot of effort into it)

At this point we rolled over and collapsed and bailed on the midnight-2am Best of the Fest. Among all this, who would have thought that we would have time to fit in some ****ing amazing cocktails at Bramble (at 5pm..whooop...we are so not in our mid-to-late 30s, man) and an unbelievably good meal at Wedgewood.

Firstly, Bramble. After a few minutes in this underground drinkers heaven, it is very easy to forget that it's actually daylight outside. If you live in Edinburgh this is probably not usually a problem, as it very rarely does have daylight outside. My Ginger T, pictured here in a teacup-stemmed glass hybrid, was meticulously assembled by this lovely gentleman, let's call him Scotty because we can't actually remember his name, from the following ingredients:
Hendrick's Gin
Battersea Quinine Cordial
Freshly squeezed lemon juice
Ginger syrup (home made!)
Hibiscus jam
egg white

Scotty was very interesting on the subject of bitters. At Bramble they have 60 different types of bitters, most of which they make themselves by stewing fruits or other flavours with ridiculously strong (illegal?) alcohol. he gave us some peach, celery and other bitters before we started to see double and retreated to the snug area at the back for a quick power kip.

After the next show, on to Wedgewood. My lovely Edinburgh-based doctor friends, and foodies extraordinaire, Jim and Sarah, had given it a formidable trailer. Run by a couple - her front of house and him in the kitchen - it probably seats 30-40 people, every one of whom looks very happy to be there. Ms Front of House is terrifyingly good at her job, at the tender age of about what appeared to be 18. Legend tells of a night where the Royal Mile had a power cut and she arranged free flowing drinks and taxis to take all of her punters to an alternative restaurant not affected by the outage.

Wedgewood is pretty keen on good ingredients. They forage for salads, mushrooms, etc, and we had a lovely salad of things that hadn't grown in Poly Tunnels. Aaaaaah the food. A menu to die for, the four of us had to coordinate choices so that we could all eat off each others plate (imagine a tasting menu but achieved through lack of table manners). Here is a low quality photo gallery of our meal, including:
Sole with broccoli puree, goats cheese and chorizo. the goats cheese sounds like a suboptimal addition to sole but worked very well - very chalky in texture and there was only the tiniest bit of it.
Veal with fondant potatoes.
Rhubarb trifle, including perhaps the richest ever home made custard.

I could really live in Edinburgh, apparently, my friends say, it is this sunny all year round....