Analysis: Feeling rather let down by a taste of the (100ft) high life

Reporter Emma Cowing reviewed the Festival in the Sky during last year's Fringe run:

I PLUCK up the courage to lift my hands off my lap and open the silver salver over my lunch plate - which is, after all, why we're here. A range of Scotland's best chefs will be taking to the sky over the course of the month to cook, and there is a heavy emphasis on the quality of the food.

So, expecting pie in the sky, I'm rather disappointed to discover that my vegetarian option features just one measly-looking rice cake, a small dod of hummus and baba ganoush, and a few slices of vegetable in jelly (although this item wins points for accurately representing how I am feeling by this point).

Meat-eaters are given cheese and biscuits with slivers of smoked salmon and venison and a small terrine. All nicely presented and relatively tasty, but even with all the novelty, 42.50 does seems a lot to pay.

The views are marvellous, of course, if you can bring yourself to look at them. The castle looks so close at times that you feel you can reach out and touch it, and it is fascinating to see Edinburgh from such an unusual perspective.

The dining in the sky concept turns the mundane into the extraordinary. On the ground a rice cake is just a rice cake. Take it up 100ft and it's a super fun rice cake in the sky. But after that revelation, it all becomes something of an endurance test.