Festival at the Deli - by Mary Contini
Valvona & Crolla is something of an Edinburgh institution. It’s Scotland’s oldest delicatessen, celebrating its 75th anniversary next year and is considered one of the must-sees for foodies.
The deli hosts a number of festival events as part of Edinburgh’s Festival Fringe and the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
Director Mary Contini, who runs Valvona & Crolla with her husband Philip, is a well known food writer and cook. She shares her festival with EatScotland.
August 14 2008 (5.05am)
Coffee addict insomnia syndrome! It’s my own fault…
The trouble with ‘meetings’ in Valvona & Crolla is that they involve coffee…and more often than not…cake! Call it hospitality, product control or just lack of discipline, but yesterday was a series of cups of coffee.
Valvona & Crolla coffee is a finely tuned beast. Freshly roasted for us from Arabica beans, it has an Italian flavour and a big clean taste that is quite literally addictive; hence the twilight zone typing. The coffee specialist in the shop was always my dear father-in-law, Carlo.
In the early days, well before my time, the coffee was all roasted in the shop. A makeshift pipe ran under the floorboards to take the smoke away. It was Carlo’s job to select, blend and roast the coffee every morning, creating an intense, heady aroma that clung to your skin and clothes and made your head spin.
I reckon the customers who used to hang out for hours chatting and gossiping were getting a free caffeine hit just by breathing in the air! Carlo should have bottled it!
The whole thing came to an end when the pipe went on fire for he umpteenth time! Even although Uncle Victor Crolla had invented a maverick fire fighting back-up plan that involved all staff running to the basement, sliding open their allotted space in the floorboards and scooshing the pipes with water from a fairy liquid bottle that was placed strategically along the pipe.
As you can imagine this Haeth Robinson solution to fire fighting didn’t comply with the fire brigade and the authorities asked Carlo to roast his coffee elsewhere!
Those were the days.
But, you know, for a shop that has survived 75 years, these are still ‘the days’ for our family, our staff and customers, locals and visitors alike. Our regular visitors are appearing, those we see once a year like clockwork to hear a show or have dinner with us…or just a morning coffee hit!
All ages, backgrounds, professions; all with their own personal memories of the shop.
I wonder how many of them can’t sleep either.