Tag Archives: Stirling

Ordinary, Scones

The Royal Ivy Hotel

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When the Royals have created such a stooshie over the Crown Estates in Scotland it is perhaps appropriate that we are visiting the Royal Ivy Hotel in Bridge of Allan. For afternoon tea no less! Fortunately the Buckingham Palace spokesman who started all the fuss has retracted his statement saying it was a misunderstanding. Presumably so that we can relax and enjoy our scones without being tormented by thoughts of HM being upset.

The Royal Ivy is situated on the the Stirling side of town and we can only hope that since it is a ‘Royal’ establishment that the Queen might see fit to distribute some of the £150m refurb of her London pad in the direction of this place. It needs it! Strawberries at the Royal Ivy Hotel, Bridge of AllanThe dated and soulless decor is such that it kind of pervades everything.  It makes you feel a bit down … depressed even. It certainly makes you acutely aware of how much general ambience matters. A huge pity because the afternoon tea was really good.

We were offered chocolate dipped strawberries and presecco to begin with .. a very nice touch. This was followed up with one of the most generous presentations of afternoon tea that we have come across. Afternoon tea at the Royal Ivy Hotel, Bridge of AllanMore chocolate dipped strawberries, strawberry tarts, assorted sandwiches, cakes and very presentable pancakes and scones. We were offered endless top ups of prosecco, tea and coffee.

All in all it was very good value for money, the only thing letting it down was the surroundings. We hope they sort it out so that this Ivy becomes more akin to its more famous namesake. Maybe a note to the HM asking for 0.0000001% of her refurbishment budget. That would cover the cost of a decent website as well!

FK9 4HH                   tel: 01786 834166                    Royal Ivy Hotel

Ordinary, Scones, self-service

Blossom’s Bistro

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Blossom’s is situated within the ever popular Torwood Garden Centre at Larbert between Falkirk and Stirling. Like the Centre itself the bistro is big, over 200 seats. Now you would not normally go to a garden centre specifically for a scone but at this time of year garden centres are going to be hard to avoid. You may as well try a scone at the same time. Internal view of Blossoms Bistro, TorwoodI have to say that Blossoms tries really hard and for the most part succeeds. There is a wide range of food on offer.

They even do an afternoon tea with generous helpings of sandwiches, cakes, scones, tea or coffee for £15 … for two people! Don’t think you can do much better than that! No surprise then that it’s a busy place, We suspect that many folk just come to the Bistro without going out to the plant area. They also support Central Arts.  An organisation of local artists, displaying and selling their artworks to benefit various charities. Highly commendable!

A Parliament of scones

It’s a beautiful warm day but I gather that some folks are getting a bit overheated regarding the upcoming election. Let’s look at it sensibly! Lets imagine Parliament being made up of scones. There would be about 650 plain ones, some of them pretty half baked. There would be another 900 or so fruit ones in ‘the other place’. All of them are half baked and we don’t really need them at all. A scone at Blossoms Bistro, TorwoodAt this point in time, before the election, all 650 of the plain scones have been discarded … binned. We only have the 900 fruit ones. Now much as I like a fruit scone many of these are well past their sell-by but there is no way of getting rid of them. Even the pigeons won’t take them.

No worries though, on May 7th, a new batch of plain scones will appear from all over the UK and normality should then be restored. However, the problem this time around seems to be with the Scottish scones. Seen by some, to be of inferior quality, hard to digest and best ignored if possible. Of course this in turn would be tricky for Scottish people to digest  because they  will have gone to a lot of trouble to make them and they know their scones are as good as any.

There are scones and scones

The democratic process that produced all these scones used to see them all as equal but maybe not anymore. Us sconeys have known for a long time that scones are not all equal, far from it. The scones we had in Blossom’s Bistro were better than expected but maybe tasted a little bit floury and slightly more cakeish than we would have liked. Nevertheless we enjoyed them, the coffee was also good, the service was very helpful and friendly. All in all, very good value for money. More than can be said for those in Parliament.

FK5 4EG          tel: 01324 557710         Blossoms Garden Centre