Pearse Street in Dublin 2 just got another great place to eat, with the opening of Cloud Picker Café in the former projector room of the Academy Cinema. Frank Kavanagh and Peter Sztal set up Cloud Picker Coffee Roasters in the city centre in 2013, and the new cafe will serve all of their seasonal coffees as well as a breakfast and lunch menu to eat in or take away.
The breakfast offering features several egg dishes on toasted challah bread – perfect with their coffee bacon jam – as well as Polish yeast buns, to reflect Sztal’s heritage, which come filled and topped with blueberries, raspberries, walnuts, or cane sugar and cardamom.
The Polish influences continues through lunch, with schnitzel and homemade kielbasa sausage sandwiches, home made sauerkraut and Sztal’s mother’s beef goulash among the options. The cafe is open Monday to Friday, 7am to 3pm.
Miele food and lifestyle events
Kitchen appliance firm Miele has signed up an impressive list of collaborators for a series of food, lifestyle and design events at its showrooms in Citywest, Dublin 24. Chef Jess Murphy kicked off the run with a Miele Signature Sessions cookery demonstration last Tuesday, May 14th at 7pm. Ross Lewis takes over the kitchen showroom next Tuesday, May 21st at the same time.
Architects Dermot Bannon, Declan O’Donnell and Denise O’Connor will be talking about how good design can improve quality of life in an Art of Living event on Saturday, May 18th at 11am. Sommelier Julie Dupouy takes over with an Art of Wine talk on Thursday, June 6th at 7pm, during which she will talk about her favourite wines and how best to store and serve them.
Tickets for each event cost €40, or €60 for two, and are available to book at miele.ie/events or be telephoning 01-4610710. The events will continue in the autumn, with restaurateur Patrick Guilbaud, and chefs Sunil Ghai from Pickle and Aidan McGrath from Wild Honey Inn booked to take part.
Food tours hit Antrim coast
Rathlin Island, off the coast of Co Antrim, is the location for one of a variety of Irish Feast Food Tours run by Caroline Redmond, the others being based in Ballycastle, Bushmills and Glenarm.
The tours are usually undertaken on foot, but as part of the Rathlin Sound Maritime Festival, there will be an opportunity on May 26th to do the island tour by boat. The motor cruiser will make six stops along the way, taking in the island’s scenery and history in a 3½-hour voyage.
The local foods that will be sampled include goat bacon muffins, kelp pesto and crackers, creel-caught shellfish, oatcakes and cheese, and smoked salmon blinis and whiskey. The tour will be led by island resident Ksenia Zywczuk and costs £70. See irishfeast.com.
Asador owners to open on northside
Restaurateur Shane Mitchell of Asador on Haddington Road in Dublin 4 is moving northside to open a second business, having taken over Moloughney’s in Clontarf’s Vernon Avenue.
Prado, which will follow Asador’s theme of cooking over fire, will open next month, following a redesign. “We have been looking [for a second premises] for a while and were absolutely delighted when this opportunity came up,” Mitchell says.
Moloughney's will close on May 31st. "We are emotional about letting go," says Liam Moloughney. "The last 10 years have been a crazy, busy dream." He and his wife, Michelle, now plan to concentrate on their other businesses, Olive's Room in St Anne's Park and Woodstock in Phibsborough.
Brunch in a bowl
Brunch with something of an Asian slant is on the menu at Opium on Wexford Street in Dublin 2 every Saturday throughout the summer. Served in the venue’s Botanical Garden space, the brunch will be served in bowls and comprise a cosmopolitan selection including a Korean style Bibimbowl and a Thai peanut and red curry bowl and a satay bowl. Slightly less Asian are the Irish full breakfast bowl and the fruit bowl with yoghurt and granola. They each cost €13.50 and are available noon-4.30pm Saturdays only.
