The Dublin Community Blog

For a few brief hours last Friday (and probably Saturday and Sunday too), every wine bar in the city lay dormant as the entire middle class population of Dublin descended upon the beautiful Iveagh Gardens for this years Taste Of Dublin. Fortunately I managed to get my hands on a couple of cheap tickets too and so with 50 “florins” (Taste of Dublin currency) in one hand and my beautiful date in the other, I set off for some top notch grub.

The weather was a little on the soft side but this had no effect on the number of people who turned up and fifteen to twenty minute queues were the norm in order to get served by most of the exhibitors. I quickly discovered that the Taste of Dublin “currency” (florin) was a scam by greedy promoters to ensure that the squeezed the maximum amount of money from the crowd, as every tent I visited also accepted euro and indeed some wouldn’t even accept the florins.

The samples given by the main exhibitors cost an average of seven euro and were a little on the small side for that price, however we were treated to plenty of free samples by friendly staff at many stalls and I enjoyed some really tasty offerings especially from the nice folk at Donnybrook Fair.

In the end I had a good night with plenty of wine, beer and food (not so much song, though the Caribbean band in the pub tent were very good) and I’d recommend the event to anyone thinking of going next year – just don’t bother with the florins.

More pictures available at the Dublin Blog group pool on Flickr