Friday, June 02, 2006
A Day of Food
What a beautiful day I had today. The sun was shining and my mum and I spent hours walking around South Dublin's little side streets looking for interesting food spots. And while that might sound boring to most people, I thought it was great. Having a day off is in itself pure luxury to me. Even after nearly a year of full-time employment I can't say as I'm used to, let alone happy about, the routine it imposes on my life. I hate to get up early, I'm no fan of mediocre coffee and I dislike the fact that my office is so far away from anything that I can't go for a wander
during my lunch break. I'd like to do my shopping day by day, but when I finally get out of the office most of the small shops I go to are shut. So a day of lounging and shopping is a much-welcomed change. Not to mention that I was quite happy to welcome my mum to Dublin. Especially when the sun is shining like today and we can stroll through the streets as if we were in Florence.After a light breakfast we headed out towards the area around
Whelan's, but in our attempt to avoid the route we take every time we managed to get ourselves lost. That was a lucky twist because we not only came across some beautiful houses with lovely blooming front gardens (I just wish my mum would stop staring into people's windows pointing out the features she liked
) and accidentally found George Bernhard Shaw's birthplace, but also discovered La Boulangerie. This little French style café and adjacent pâtisserie
made my heart jump with joy. It is the first time I found a bakery in Dublin that satisfies my longing for continental cream cakes and coffee house culture. And, even more excitingly, as it is owned by an Algerian, they sell little North African pastries of the sort that Lofty and I ate almost daily on our trip through Morocco a few years ago. In my excitement I bought one of each - And was not disappointed. They are excellent. Those little delights of sweet pastry, nuts and sugar syrup alone are worth a trip from anywhere in town. I'll definitely be back.Especially as the place is conveniently located between Liston's and the kosher bakery. I'm going to have to do a combined run to all three some time soon. Today we only did Liston's, which was enough to fill my bag with all kinds of goodies. So, after only about 2 hours, I was
weighed down enough to want to go back home. But we didn't. Instead we did a mad circle from Dunnes on South George's Street to Arnott's kitchen department, then on to the Silk Road Café at the Chester Beatty library for lunch and the Queen of Tarts for desert. And then, stuffed with cake and loaded down with food as we were, we headed straight back to Grafton Street and hit Marks & Spencer's food hall. My mum ha
d brought some asparagus from Germany and we were going to have it for dinner as they do over there: Boiled with baby potatoes, hollandaise sauce and smoked meat/fish. I had some sliced Serrano ham left in the fridge, but we felt that we should at least pay a token tribute to Ireland and get some smoked salmon. Dunnes had had lovely spuds, but their salmon was Norwegian. But Marks & Spencer helped out and in the end we had a lovely springtime dinner.Christine at 9:03 pm
