The other day, my family and I took the opportunity to have lunch in Alfie’s on William St. South after noticing their “€10 Lunch Box” promotion on a sign just outside the door. We were greeted by friendly staff who accommodated us and made us feel a little more at ease with a toddler and a buggy. (Any parents living in Dublin will tell you that some city centre restaurants are more accommodating to families than others.)

Upstairs, the atmosphere was lively and well lit from the sun roof. I’m a sucker for natural light in restaurants, so this is always a big plus for me.

On looking at the items on the “Lunch Box” menu, I was fairly impressed with the selection. You have a choice of three items plus a soft drink. I played the part of the stereotypical male and ordered the hamburger and chips, as well as the goats cheese salad (which, ironically enough, is meant to cater to the female patrons, according to the website). My wife ordered the chicken penne basil, chicken wrap, and Caesar salad.

The highlight of my meal was definitely the salad, which was sprinkled with chopped cashews, sun dried tomato, and topped with a good sized square of goats cheese. The hamburger was simple and wasn’t very large (half portion), but it was tasty, as were the chips.

Next time, however, I’ll be skipping the burger and chips and ordering what my wife ordered. (Isn’t that usually how it goes?) I had a bite of both the penne basil and the chicken wrap that she ordered and was VERY impressed.

Overall, the Alfie’s “Lunch Box” menu offers excellent variety at great value in a vibrant restaurant with friendly staff. Needless to say, it’s now at the top of my list for lunch in Dublin city centre.

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All this good weather seems to have given the city an extra spring in its step – the streets seem even busier in the evenings with people taking advantage of the last of the sun. With the skies staying bright until 8:30 at least, it’s the perfect time of year for enjoying a few drinks outdoors. These are some of my favourite beer gardens in town:

Porterhouse North, Phibsboro
Located beside the Cross Guns bridge on the north side of Phibsboro, the Porterhouse North stocks the same vast range of beers as its sister pub in the city centre (and serves an even bigger range of food). It has a large beer garden at the back of the pub, which is sheltered but still gets the sun.

Dicey Reillys, Harcourt Street
A Dublin staple! Right in the city centre too – which means it’s usually buzzing with people.

Fitzsimons, Temple Bar
Yes, it may be in the centre of thronged Temple Bar, but Fitzsimons’ beer garden has the unique advantage of being on its roof, which means lovely city views. Worth it for a short stop.

The Hole In The Wall, Blackhorse Avenue
Arguably the biggest beer garden in Europe! The Hole In The Wall still carries on a century-old tradition of serving great pints and passing them through – yep, a hole in the wall – to the Phoenix Park. Genius.

What have I missed? Suggestions welcome in the comments…

Dublin does not have many Lebanese restaurants and I happen to be a big fan of Lebanese cuisine. To satisfy my cravings for Lebanese food, I recently decided to look for Lebanese restaurants in the city and ended up going to Byblos on St Andrew street. Byblos is situated next to Cedar Tree, which is the oldest Lebanese restaurant in Dublin. The two restaurants seem to be associated with each other. Both restaurants offer fairly extensive dinner menus while Byblos also opens for lunch and specializes in Mezze, which is a collection of appetizers that is great for sharing.

We decided to visit Byblos on a quiet East Monday afternoon to try the lunch menu as it offered a variety of items at fairly reasonable prices. The restaurant was largely empty with only two other tables that were occupied. We immediately noticed that the place was exceptionally clean with a comfortable decor. The two of us were quickly assigned a table and given our menus.

We were quite hungry so we ordered a Shawarma Platter, a Chicken Shawarma, and a Mezze Kibbe. The service was really good but the restaurant wasn’t busy at the time. We didn’t have to wait long before the food arrived. The portions were large and the food was excellent and fresh. We found that the platters were large enough for us and ordering the Mezze wasn’t really necessary. We had a hard time finishing all the food but our gluttony was well satisfied.

If you are in town and want to eat something a bit different give Byblos a try. In case that you are unsure of Lebanese food or the restaurant, I recommend trying the lunch menu at Byblos. It will give you an opportunity to sample the food at reasonable prices.

Well, Catherine mentioned about it come time ago and so…. it happed.

Maybe it was not extremely popular, but people who ‘got frozen’ were visible. And for one ‘freezing performer’ there was one photographer.

Cheers to all brave ones!

Blackboard Bistro

Originally uploaded by Visual Machine
Blackboard Bistro is just opposite to National Gallery on Clare Street. It is run by Irish-French couple. Each day chef has 3 amazing lunch dishes ready for you. You can find French cuisine, some Italian or Thai, but this is his magic talent what makes them so delicious, you discover the food you know for ages again.
Highly recommended for nice lunch or evening date, because Blackboard is open until 10 PM from Monday to Saturday.
Prices do not exceed 15 euros for dish.

Website

When you hear new music perhaps everyone starts to search in the head for tha latest tunes of Rihanna. But no. New music is the phrase for all these ‘avangarde’ followers of classic music. It’s not Bach, Mozart or Verdi. Think Messiaen, Stockhausen, Part or the recently famous Gorecki.

And so we had a rare opportunity to listen to Gorecki’s music last Sunday at National Gallery. It was Ireland-Poland Cultural Foundation event for the closing of Polish painting exhibition. The performeres were members of Concorde – an Irish ensable performing contemporary music.

The concert was devided into 3 sets of 30 minutes long music. It was brilliant idea because Gorecki’s music is very contemplative and you need break to admire it. Another good idea was comparing Gorecki’s pieces to another Polish composer: Marta Ptaszynska. The strange thing was that the music did not represented period of time of the paintings, though Polish music of this period has two brilliant composers: Szymanowski and Karlowicz.

In time when Coca-Cola considers its tv ads as art (thank you, Andy Warhol) it is good to have opportunity to listen music less ordinary. All audience like the performance. They were ususally surprised of what they heard. And perhaps they will drop in to next Concerde show in The Hugh Lane Gallery on February 10th.

Photo: courtesy of Kasia Kurta.

If you are not into all that popular music you can see in TV or hear on the radio or if you just want to take a brake form all that noise, you should search for some concert of Ewa Gigon. Recently she performed at BoomBoomRoom . A nice guy with a guitar who played before her, seemed not to impress the audience and the noise in the room only could confirm that.

The first notes of Ewa’s performance calmed down the crowd imediately. But who would not pay attention to skilled soprano voice multiplied by some electronic devices. A very strange feeling just after another guitar player.

In another song Ewa guided surprised audience to darker moods of her imagination using digital noise samples and empty beer glasses. After that part followed a cover song of Talk Talk with nicely multilplied ‘talktalk’ phrace to add the rythm.
Unfortunately the gig finished as suddenly as it started. Ewa took everyone’s attention so 45 minutes performance seemed to last just a while. She sang one more song and disappeared.

We have to wait for her upcoming album this yea and check her website http://www.myspace.com/ewagigon for more gig information.

Ewa Gigon at BoomBoomRoom.

For who?

Bjork fans, ‘reaserching electronica’ lovers, free jazz and dark moods aficionados.

The Old City, New Dreams event last night at the Mill Theatre in Dundrum was very characteristic of its host, The Dubliner magazine: a little satire and humour, a little serious intensity (actually quite unusual for The Dubliner), and a little controversy – though decidedly far less controversy than the debacle with Tiger Woods’ wife last autumn. The general idea of the week’s Main Event was a) to hear from a variety of public figures in Dublin about how to make the city a better place to live and b) to elicit participation from the audience. In fact, The Dubliner’s editor, Trevor White, actually invited the audience to interrupt and throw things such as “popcorn or old socks� at the presenters if there was any disagreement. Unfortunately, to this blogger’s great disappointment, no such drama ensued. Had there been a contingent of England Premiership fans, I’m sure it would’ve been a different story.

DJ and concert promoter, Gerry Godley, started out with a rather vague answer to all of Dublin’s problems by quoting The Beatles – “all you need is love.� Though it later became clearer that he was suggesting a public agency to promote culture in the city centre (I think), Trevor summarized his answer numerous times throughout the evening by saying “Gerry Godley wants to promote more free sex – is that what you were getting at Gerry?�

Next up was comedian Arhondia and, as you might expect, she rose from the table to present her solution with a mini stand up comedy act. It didn’t go over very well, though I’d be willing to give her a second chance at Battle of the Axe on a Tuesday night. Her solution was free elocution lessons to give all Dubliners North Dublin accents.

Human rights expert and politician Valerie Bresnihan gave an emotionally intense plea to reduce crime and poverty by sending mental health workers from the state into the homes of patients. Though her tone didn’t exactly match the winsome atmosphere that Trevor tried to establish at the beginning, in the end her argument won the audience over.

Feargal Quinn submitted his recommendation to put a roof over the Grafton Street and Henry Street shopping districts. Irish Daily Mail’s Paul Drury put in his bid to preserve the traditional Irish pub in Dublin with a return to traditional Irish music and Guinness served at room temperature. In contrast, cheeky columnist Max McGuinness put forward his recommendation to leave nostalgia behind and ban the Irish language, Bloomsday, and Guinness altogether. Sarah Owens used the occasion to launch her own personal campaign to elect Mr. Tayto as Mayor of Dublin. (She is, afterall, in the advertising business.) And finally, Senate candidate, Stephen Douglas, suggested a plan to “evaporate traffic� in the city centre.

After the night got rolling, there was some response and interaction from various members of the audience. However, it probably could’ve used a handful of football fans or even WTO protesters to spice things up a bit. Overall, it was good craic and a great idea from The Dubliner magazine. The free cocktails at the end were a particularly nice touch. Old City, New Dreams continues for the next two nights at Dundrum’s Mill Theatre.

Having a sneaky early Friday in town, I rang Derv to see if she was around for lunch.
In a fantastic moment of inspiration she rang the Winding Stair to see if they had a table available!
So we trundled up to the small but airy restaurant for our lunch.
The room is really nicely decorated – simple and sympathetic to the building. You see the kitchen through the hatch at the back, and all there is lots of action around the bar on the side of the room.

After long deliberations I ordered devilled kidneys and Derv had a poached duck egg with hollandaise and asparagus. And we splashed out on a bowl of homemade chips with aioli. The meal arrived in perfect time (too quick – I get suspicious, too long – I get cranky!).
My kidneys were presented on toast with a extremely simple but delicious green salad.
They were perfectly cooked and had a really great flavour. I really took my time over them to savour the taste.
Dervla’s egg was perfectly cooked, which for me makes the dish! The chips were piping hot, and tasted as if they were cooked in animal fat. YUM!

Not long after we received our food we decided to have a glass of wine each. We ordered the Riesling from the blackboard behind us. Two very generous glasses arrived and it was very (too!) drinkable.

Meal finished we ordered coffees – I have to say mine was a little cold, but after jumping on the chips when they arrived and burning my mouth… I didn’t really mind too much.

The staff were friendly and attentive. Our waiter attempted to schmooze two ladies beside us. He was under the impression that it was working, but they didn’t seem that impressed

I could have ordered ANYTHING from the menu, it all sounded really delicious. Right up my street. The focus seems to be on good ingredients cooked simply. I cannot argue with that!

I will DEFINITELY be back!

Rating: food: 5/5, ambiance 4/5, service 4/5 and value 3/5 All in all 16 out of 20.

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