Back up to peerless Scotland last week. The country was breathtaking in metaphor and lung, the nation a prickly curmudgeon, but the people as funny and canny and thoughtful as you’ll find in this world or the next.

If you don’t drink, Scotland is one long McRamadan, so I ate the traditional Highland fare, which is as much fresh air as you can gulp and the occasional hearty and sustaining midge. Scotland is one of those rare places where starvation is tastier and healthier than dinner.

I wrote something similar a couple of weeks back, and I wouldn’t normally repeat myself, except that it raised gales of bitter Jacobite fury among the victuallers of Caledonia. If it were anywhere else, I’d let them stew in it. But Scotland isn’t anywhere else. It’s as close as I get to a homeland — the definition of home being the place that has to take you in when you turn up at four in the morning, smelling of vomit, with one shoe, a black eye, a slice of cold Hawaiian pizza and a summons. (In Scotland, this is also known as “first-footing”.) Anyway, my comments were patently and uncontentiously true — beyond the suburbs of Edinburgh and Glasgow, most of Scotland is a gastronomic midden.

My mailbox fell into two halves. There were the “Piss off, you numpty English poof. If I ever see you near my Scotch-egg and haggis-burger van, I’ll slit you from heid to pluck” letters. And there were the anguished bellows from the collective mine hosts of small hotels and twinky boarding houses, who said that I obviously hadn’t eaten in the places they knew and challenged me to spend months ferreting about to find mother nature’s manna made miraculous by the fairy fingers of Scottish genius. They went on to list the amount of money spent by assorted tourist quangos on promoting oatcakes and marmalade, how many self-help organisations and associations had instigated festivals, open days and barbecues, and how many guidebooks had awarded how many rosettes, stars, exclamation marks and red thistles to the dining rooms of the mist. And now, here I was, spoiling it all with my smarmy, ignorant, cheap jibes — just when it was all going so well.

But it wasn’t. This is all just new-Scotia spin. Despite the hurt feelings and paper good intentions, they’d rather have a leaflet and a tourist trail and a wee fun pack for the kiddies than learn how to cook without a microwave. And part of the problem is that Scots, singly and collectively, take criticism about as well as cats take power showers. The incandescent chippiness that is the defining characteristic of my people is a hopeless hindrance to any constructive debate.

What’s so miserable about Scottish food is that it fell from such a high table. It was once a byword for generosity and comfort, not just in England, but in France; read old cookery books and you’ll find an extinct culinary civilisation. There are plenty of reasons for its collapse — a vanishing and shifting population, industry, cities, the obsolescence of crofting and fishing, changes in cooking fuel and methods. But the result is that, in three generations, a simple but healthy diet based on potatoes, herring, cabbage and mutton has turned into the sickest diet in the civilised world, based on processed fat and sugar and mechanically reclaimed gristle.

Catering’s answer to this catastrophe is to print a tartan brochure and put a Highlander on the tin and concentrate on improving the tourist industry. No national cuisine can flourish on selling packed lunches to foreign walkers. Scottish food should be eaten by Scots, and it’s not, because it’s not on offer unless you go on a hide-and-seek treasure hunt to find some pixie bannock-baker.

When was the last time any of us was offered powsowdie, bawd bree, partan bree, skink, kale brose, crappit heids, veal flory, iced stapag, crowdie, Scots toast or Scotch woodcock? What happened to the family of brittle, nutty oatcakes and bannocks, the warm clan of scones and pancakes, the hospitality of boiled cakes and the great arsenal of dumplings, shortbreads and fancy buns? That was Scotland’s culture. Does anyone now go north and think “Yum. This is a nation world-famous for its baking, preserves, puddings, pies and potted things”? Because it was once. Scots cooks were renowned across the seven seas.

If you’re Scots and in catering, then by all means be angry. But save your breath for your porridge. The truth, despite the wishful spinning and blether, remains: if you’re going to Scotland, eat first.

Right, let’s move sharpish to sunny Morocco, at Pasha, on the Gloucester Road, west London. Pasha was opened by Mogens Tholstrup, a charming blond watchstand who once dated Tara P-T. Tholstrup was a totemic feature of the 1980s, an archetypal Thatcherite entrepreneur and the man responsible for the great social bottleneck that was Daphne’s restaurant — although I never saw him pick up a plate or say anything about food. Pasha was never quite as successful, and is now under new management.

No decorative style has been so mortally sinned against as Moroccan in a cold climate. Pasha has had a makeover, but still looks like a student’s exotic shag pad. There’s a great deal of hanging stuff that all smells of Pasha’s past, and the seats are knee-crackingly low (why is eating in a Moroccan restaurant always like the PTA meeting at an infants’ school?). There was what sounded like Egyptian pop music playing too insistently.

The Blonde and I took Rupert Everett, who isn’t eating meat, so it should have been perfect for him. He picked and prodded, saying “That’s nice” and “That’s all right”. But when I asked if he’d ever consider coming back, he made a face like Frankie Howerd and said “No”, as if I’d asked if he’d ever considered being a mime. The food really isn’t very good. The dishes are parsimonious and sparse. The tagines, couscous and salads are underpowered and coarse.

The saving grace of the evening was the belly dancers. One lady in particular could manoeuvre her breasts individually in an alarmingly compulsive manner. They would jump about in her bra like lemmings in blancmange. Rupert and I stared askance. There was simply no other way to look. She came over and offered to show us how it was done. It had something to do with clenching — not my strong suit.

I heartily recommend the belly dancers. In fact, both of Pasha’s stars are hers. But I also thought that here, perhaps, was the answer to Scotland’s flatlined grub. Get those heavy-chested Kirsties and Megs jigging and reeling their baps to the skirl of a Jimmy Shand eightsome. Desperate times, desperate measures.

PASHA

Open daily, noon-1.30am
1 Gloucester Road, SW7; 020 7589 7969

5 stars Shake that thing
4 stars Wiggle it
3 stars Think about it
2 stars Forget it
1 star Beat it

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