I could kiss the salvaged scaffolding floor. People of the northside I love you. Here’s a cafe in an old sweet factory with a bicycle chandelier hanging out of the ceiling and it’s a pulled pork-free zone.
Blas Cafe opened last year in the ground floor of the Chocolate Factory, the 110-year-old Williams & Woods building on King's Inn Street. This delicious old dowager of a 20th century building is hemmed in by dodgy 1990s architecture. Multi-storey carpark? Tick. Window grills? Tick. Biscuit brown brick finishes? Tick. The Chocolate Factory was one of Dublin's first concrete buildings which probably meant it was cheaper to leave it standing than to knock it down. Then restaurateur Val Routledge bought it and the sturdy old shell has been slowly decked out in rough-hewn timber and ply into a cafe on the ground floor and art studios above.
On the last visit here more than two years ago I climbed up the stairs to the roof where hens were pecking their way around compost bins and there were plans for an urban farm. Sadly it didn’t work out. Pigeons presumably now peck where the high-rise hens once did.
But there’s food on the ground floor and it’s good. Instead of the ubiquitous pulled pork, there’s a beef “po boy” which is southern drawl for “poor boy”. Legend has it this sandwich got its name in 1920s New Orleans when two brothers with a sandwich shop handed them out to striking streetcar conductors.
One of the three men behind Blas Cafe, Hassan Lemtouni, ran a Moroccan restaurant in Athens Georgia, and worked in New York's Dean & DeLuca, and Fallon & Byrne before arriving here. The other partners are Eoin Williams and Tuathal McClenaghan.
Williams worked in a health food shop for 13 years. That makes sense of the menu, which has lots of lighter options alongside ribsticking stews and a three-cheese sandwich. You order at the counter. My retail professional friend quietly points out how they could put a menu further down the counter where the queue starts. She’s been here before and service has been consistently charming, friendly and forgetful. But something has always been missing or wrong. “But don’t say that because I really like it,” she says. It’s fine today – we get our order to the table on prison-style enamel plates exactly as we wanted.
My “po boy” is deliciously warm on a feathery bun from the nearby Arun Bakery. The beef has been pulled to soft threads mixed with a light mayonnaise and served with folded leaves of the freshest salad vegetables. Slivers of gherkin which lie pillowed in the bun give it a tang. Her wrap has sweetly roasted vegetables, perfectly ripe avocado chunks and a minty-tasting yoghurt dressing. There’s a coriander pesto there too, according to the menu. She’s got the beet salad on the side.
Kate Packwood’s Wildflour Bakery supply the sweet stuff. There’s a coffee and walnut glaze on top of a tiny dense sandcastle of great sponge cake and a triangular sea salt dark chocolate caramel brownie. Excellent coffee and tea in a generous pot round it all off.
It’s early days. They only do breakfast, lunch and Saturday brunch here so far and they only take cash. It reminds me of the Fumbally where they served falafel and nothing else in their opening weeks until they found their feet in style.
Given the great northside bakers they’re using here (Thibault Peigne’s Tartine sourdough is also available for sandwiches), I’d like to see a bit more thought into other ingredients. The chicken delivery guy who pulls up doesn’t have the words free range or organic on the side of his white van. Battery chicken chipotle doesn’t appeal.
That aside, this is a great roomy warm cafe in a back lane, hemmed in by fast food franchises and takeaways.
Blas Cafe is a sweet place, in more ways than one. Lunch for two with coffee and tea came to €26.
The verdict: 7.5/10 : Tasty fresh food bringing a great old building back to life
Facilities: Chilly but fine
Music: Low key funk
Food provenance: Great on the baked goods, scant elsewhere
Wheelchair access: Yes
Vegetarian options: Good
SECOND HELPING...
There’s a touch of hiding-your-gin-in-the-holy-water-bottle to the Westin’s “most peculiar afternoon tea”, where they serve your mojito in a teapot. Not a vintage silver one, as I’d imagined, but a ceramic hotel teapot, complete with strainer to catch the lemon pulp and mint shards. My friend had a three-week wait for our seat at one of the two afternoon sittings. It was, apart from a very small man who looked to be a few weeks old, entirely populated by women. There was one properly delicious mouthful on the €30-a-head slate cake stand – the pork cheek confit with stilton and honey mayonnaise. The rest were standard canape fare and sugar laden desserts and cakes. Fun? Definitely. But not because of the food. The Westin Hotel, College Green, Westmoreland St, Dublin 2 . Tel: 01-645 1000
