The Dublin Community Blog

Aaaand we’re back! For the second outing of the Gourmet Club we decided on the Eden Restaurant in Temple Bar. With a menu changing on a weekly basis, Eden is definitely one of these places you could go to every so often and still be surprised with what’s on the menu.

It is quite a stylish place with a modern, light interior, large windows looking out over the restaurant’s terrace and Meeting House Square and a semi open kitchen. We were seated at a large table next to the kitchen, so we had a great view of the bowls of fresh ingredients and the, surprisingly silent, kitchen staff working away preparing our dishes.

The pre-theatre menu is a weekly changing three course menu that, for this week, offers a choice of 5 appetisers, 4 main courses and three desserts. Available Sunday to Thursday and will cost €27. The wine was really nice and we once again managed to get through enough bottles throughout the meal.

Sticking with the vegetarian options this time, as a starter I chose a salad of Cashel Blue cheese, caramelised fennel, woodland mushrooms and tarragon. Lovely laid out on the plate and a great combination of flavours, but a small portion though. The steamed Mussels were another good option, but we all agreed that the first prize definitely went to the seared rate tuna, which was very steaky and incorporated in a beautiful creation on the plate.

The main course for me was aubergine gratin with lentils, mozzarella, oven dried tomatoes and rocket leaves. In one word delicious. Gratins can sometimes be far too cheesy and the flavour of the other ingredients is taken away by the overload of cheese. This was definitely not the case here. The lentils and aubergine were an excellent match for the cheese and the salad of rocket leaves and oven dried offered an excellent fresh alternative on the side. There might have been a bit too much rocket compared to the tomato, but all I think we all agreed that it beat the plaice fillet and the braised pork.

My dessert of choice was a moist baked chocolate torte with hazelnut praline semifreddo. The torte was not exactly a torte, but was actually more like chocolate cake. It was nice, but did not live up to the high standard of the rest of the meal. The other dessert of choice by some of the Gourmet club members was warm Danish apple cake, which was gorgeous and it made us torte-choosers very jealous I must admit.

The service was alright, although not excellent, but we definitely sat more comfortably than last time and there was no mix-up with any dishes.

There were no separate ladies and gents toilets as such, but a distinction between them could be seen on the doors of every individual stall in a quite original way, as the picture will surely show…

As for my grades on the ‘Gourmet Club Scale of 1 to 5’: food: 4/5, ambiance 3/5, service 3/5 and value 4/5 All in all 14 out of 20.

P.S. they have a cookbook too. So nothing can stop us from recreating these lovely dishes at home: ‘Eden Cookbook’ by Eleanor Walsh and Michael Durkin (Gill & MacMillan)

Seared Rate Tuna – Quail eggs, curried aioli and green salad



Aubergine Gratin – Lentil du Puy, mozzarella, oven dried tomato and rocket salad

The Clarence Hotel are currently exhibiting rock memorabilia that are going for auction in the Hard Rock Cafe, Times Square, New York at 5pm on April 21st. The beneficiary of the auction is the Music Rising – Instruments for the Gulf Coast organisation.

Music Rising, a campaign launched in 2005 to replace musical instruments lost or destroyed by hurricanes in the Gulf Region. The initiative continues to aid those in need through its consistent efforts to aid professional musicians, churches and schools. Music Rising was formed in late 2005 by U2’s The Edge, legendary producer Bob Ezrin, Gibson Guitar Chairman and CEO Henry Juszkiewicz.

The Clarence exhibition includes the following lots:

Lot 43 – Bob Dylan Handwritten Set List
Est: $1,000/2,000

Lot 125 – Madonna Signed Check
Est: $400/600

Lot 131 – Nirvana “Heart-Shaped Box� MTV Music Award 1994
Est: $4,000/6,000

Lot 178 – U2 Signed Album Cover (Unforgettable Fire)
Est: $800/1,200

Lot 184 – U2 Drummer Larry Mullen Jr.’s Concert Used Tom Drum
Est: $8,000/10,000

Lot 185 – Bono’s Trademark Irish Falcon Guitar
Est: $80,000/$100,000

Lot 187 – Bono’s Stage Worn Sunglasses
Est: $2,000/4,000

Lot 188 – The Edge’s Early U2 Jacket
Est: $4,000/6,000

And many more, including most of the U2 lots.

The auction can be followed online and registration and details can be found on Julien’s Auctions website.

The Clarence exhibition is on until Friday 6th at lunchtime. I visited today – if rock memorabilia is your thing, its definitely worth a visit. The catalogue is available for purchase for eur30.

Happy bidding!

On Merrion Street, squeezed in between the Taoiseach’s Department and the National Gallery, lies Dublin’s Natural History Museum. This museum is, in my opinion, one of the true gems Dublin has to offer.

This 18th Century building is the purpose-built museum destined to house what was at the time the RDS’ collection of animal and geological specimens. It was part of the  then RDS complex, which now houses the Government buildings as well as the Archeology and History Museum on Kildare Street. Nowadays, the museum is, like the one on Kildare street, part of the National Museum of Ireland.
The museum opened its doors in 1857 and its collection nowadays comprises approximately two million specimens. Only a small percentage of this total collection is actually on display inside the museum, the rest is stored in the Museum’s storage facilities and used for research, teaching and conservation purposes.
Much of the museum’s collection is a legacy of eighteenth and nineteenth century British colonialism. A large number of so-called ‘Gentleman’s collections’ of exotic animals, birds, skins and skeletons from all parts of the British Commonwealth have been donated to the museum over the centuries, and this allowed for an enormous and extremely varied collection to be established.
Not only the specimens themselves and the stories behind them bring the visitor back to nineteenth century times, the whole layout and interior of the museum really allows for a little bit of imaginary time travel. From the moment you step in to the door, you enter a Victorian world of wood-framed display cases filled to their maximum potential with all sorts of animals.
The ground floor houses a collection of animals that can or could be found in Ireland at some stage. Two enormous Giant Irish Deer skeletons welcome you and behind them and along the walls are cases with birds, mammals, fish and other animals in all shapes and sizes.
On the first floor and the two balconies that look out upon it, the display is laid out in order to reflect the natural order of species. A revolutionary theory at the time the display was set up. The top balcony houses the invertebrates. Many of the sea creatures are glass models that show the amazing colours and drastically increase the size of the otherwise often not visible organisms. Insects and spiders with amazing colours can also be found on this level.
The lower balcony houses a vast array of fish, reptiles and birds; again reflecting evolution theory. The mammals on the first floor are quite often remnants or souvenirs of the big exploration expeditions of Victorian times. Lack of funding has prevented the museum from much needed restoration of many of the specimens, so the paleness of the lion and the cream and brown stripes of the zebra should not be mistaken for characteristics of alternative species.

Standing in the middle of the room on the first floor looking up, you meet the gaze of the hundreds of animal heads looking down on you from the pillars and balconies above. The whale skeletons that hang from the ceiling and the elephant, giraffe and rhino’s that are placed across the room really give the place that sort of mysterious vibe you get in dusty attics filled with children’s toys from the 1920s. You really wonder if the animals come alive at night…..
The museum staff can tell you an endless number of anecdotes of children coming in with bugs in a jar asking if they have just discovered a new species, people writing letters describing strange humming sounds coming from their greenhouse or even the vast number of panicky phonecalls about spider invasions and how to get rid of them.

Even though it might not be ‘up to speed’ with other natural history museums when it comes to display and interactives, this museum is well known world wide for its treasures and has definitely found a place in the collective memory of Dublin and its inhabitants. Many of them lovingly refer to it as ‘the Dead Zoo’. Which, I think, is the only correct nickname you could give a place like this.

The entrance is free of charge and the Museum is opened every day except Mondays. Be quick though. Word on the street is that it will close its doors for extensive renovation and necessary improvements to its facilities at the end of this year. In Ireland that unfortunately means it could take a few years before it will re-open…..

(I will post some pictures soon. until then: visit www.museum.ie for more information)

There’s an interesting report out today from Mercer Human Resource Consulting that ranks Dublin 27th in the world for “quality of living.â€?  (Irish Independent report)  Switzerland blew away the competition with two of its cities taking the first and second positions on the list (Zurich and Geneva, respectively), followed by Vancouver and Vienna.  The report also ranks Dublin at 20th in “worldwide health and sanitationâ€? and 18th in the “cost of livingâ€? category.  Good to know there are at least 17 other cities in the world that are more expensive to live in.  Just be glad you don’t live in Moscow (1st) or London (5th).  (Click here for highlights from the report.)  What the report fails to mention, however, is that despite it’s ranking at 27, Dublin is actually number 1 in the “coolest city in the world” category.