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20th December 2016
12:10am GMT
The whole city has gone absolutely brunch fucking mad. I remember the days a few years ago when Odessa was pretty much the only place in town that did a decent brunch menu and had a buzzing room. Something happened though recently and every Dubliner suddenly realised what the rest of the world knew...brunch is by far the best meal of the week and is more important than a religion or going to mass. Large portions. No work to worry about. Daytime cocktails. Lots of pork products. How the hell did it take us all so long to cop on?
If there is one slight problem with brunch it is the lack of healthy options. I'm on huge fitness buzz at the moment and with that in mind I set out to find something a little "cleaner" than a big fry up or steak and eggs this weekend. I hit the jackpot in Slice cafe in Dublin 7. It is a newly opened sister restaurant to the wonderful cake cafe. Slice is part restaurant, part cafe and even leaning towards the wine bar side of things with a shit load of nice cakes on show as well as you would expect. The room is seriously small but that means it is buzzing at the weekend and apart from the fucker drilling a sign into the wall outside the atmosphere was lovely. I wasn't out the night before but if I did have a hangover I would have dragged him outside and water boarded him for a couple of minutes. Slice feels like a cafe in Melbourne which is home to the best cafe culture in the world and it is yet another example of the wonderful no bullshit and affordable pricing approach to serving food and drink that so many new places are taking.
I had a cold pressed apple, pear and cardamom juice which was like pouring liquid gold into the body. Porridge was absolutely perfect with pomegranate, pumpkin seeds and crushed cardamom (they must have a shit load of it to get rid off in here or it is some sort of new health trend I've missed). Again this was about as healthy as it gets and I lashed it into me. I'm pretty sure those first two thing added an extra couple of days to my life expectancy alone so having been good it was time to be a little bold.
Now there are very few times when I piss my pants because food is so good but this was one of them. My home made beans and sausages on toast was a wonderful case of underselling and over delivering. The sourdough was dripping with butter and maybe the nicest slice of bread I've ever eaten. The beans were packed full of flavour and so good that I barely went for the little pieces of sausage which is a first. So simple but so so fucking good. I'd put it up with some of the best things I've had for brunch in Dublin.
The room is small and I can see a day where there are queues outside here at the weekends. I'm loving the creativity that is happening in around this area of the city (Brother Hubbard, Oxmantown, Mulligans etc) and you'd have to think a lot of it has to do with lower rents. See what happens with lower rent is it allows people to be fair with their prices and get creative with their food. All of the above along with a sparkling water and a 3Fe coffee set me back 18 Euros. I nearly felt like saying "can I not give you some more money because that was worth at least 30". I will be back here many many times in the future. Superb.
I am only one person eating here on one day so to add a little balance to things here are some other great foodies who have taken time to review the place.
