Macaroni Pie

The macaroni pie is a humble, unassuming thing. Appearing unnervingly similar to the clog it will later form in one of your major arteries, it can’t be called aesthetically pleasing. Its texture – a claggy, gelatinous interior, encased in pastry that is tooth-shatteringly crunchy on the sides and yet somehow so soggy on the base that it sags like a leaking ceiling - is hardly appetising either. Once you take a bite and start chewing, you’ll experience something that can only be oxymoronically described as flavourfully flavourless. Like if you could taste beige. But you’ll be eating this at a rugby match in Glasgow, likely in mid-winter. When the mercury drops far below freezing, and the bitter west coast wind drives icy rain like needles into your face, this pale, brownish mass of saturated fat and carbs will taste like manna from heaven. Only in Scotland could you find a food so objectively unhealthy and unappealing and yet somehow satisfying, whose main redeeming quality might be that it will kill you before the cold does. Don’t miss it.