http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/ Welcome to Been there. Your tips on the places you know - that you love, live in or have just visited - are what make this guide. http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/17633 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/17633 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/11534 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/11534 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/8014
The head butcher has a really big belly, which in my opinion is a quality trademark of good butchers, as they want to serve customers fresh produce but don't like to throw their high quality products away - so they eat it themselves. That's the same with my village butcher at home.

Apart from that, there is a wide variety of special sausages to try for free - from wild boar to beef with blackberries and Lucifer's matchsticks.

The butcher is also very friendly and chatty, and they have leaflets on their products such as the history of Haggis and Burn's supper, including a variety of poems. They might even recite them for you at the till to get you to hear them with the original Scots language.]]> http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/8014 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/7953 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/7953 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/7895
It also has a buzzing atmosphere in the evening with people drinking in the many pubs and eateries with funny names like Filthy McNasty and Dirty Dicks. It's a great place to mingle with the Scots.]]> http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/7895 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/7889 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/7889 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/7778
When the finest Italian food shop in the country only sells one fresh sausage, you know it's going to be good. Valvona & Crolla's Fonteluna doesn't disappoint. This is a solid, semi-cured sausage flavoured with chilli and fennel. As it is semi-cured it can be eaten raw as a salami or cooked. It can be cooked by either frying or grilling. As it is a dry sausage it really needs a wet sauce - I like it diced in a tomato sauce, thinly sliced and used as a pizza topping or with peppers.

It's not cheap at £4.95 for 265g but this is concentrated, strong tasting sausage with no water or cheap filler. Highly recommended! It would be a hard soul that would not come out of here the richer in taste and the poorer in pocket. Worth visiting on a Sunday morning, especially for their imported Indian peppercorns, or just to sit and have tea in their restaurant while the world muses and peruses. Blue Mountain coffee or green tea? Jalapenos peppers or habaneros?]]> http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/7778