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20th December 2016
12:10am GMT
Eating healthy is a massive pain in the hole. Doing so in the city at lunch time is the hardest because there are so few options and because that magical hour is the only thing you get to look forward to during your working day and you don't want to end up with a serious case of "lunch regret" by eating a shit salad or a below average soup. I'd eat sushi myself every single day but you'd need a mortgage to keep that sort of lifestyle on a full time basis. One spot that I always used to like was Honest To Goodness in George's Street arcade. The only problem was that it was so small you had about as much chance of getting in as a GAA fan wearing their team colors does to Krystle on a Friday night. I've gone to review the place countless times only to see their tiny selection of tables all taken and a queue out the door. Every time I walked away thinking "would the fuckers ever cop themselves on and just open a bigger place". Luckily they did...
The new vastly improved bigger venue is around the corner just beside Odessa. While the old place felt like a hippy had thrown it together while stoned this place has been professionally designed with slick lines, straight edges and loads of seating. It feels like walking in to a chain restaurant in London. The first thing to love is how you pick from the menu. You are given a laminated card that you write on with large black markers. It puts the onus on you and saves the waiting staff time hanging around for you to make your decision. Why hasn't somebody else thought of this before?
Everything you want for lunch is here. Salads that fill you up and aren't just a bowl of shitty old boring leaves. I had chicken and cheese salad which came with some delicious bread. I always loved this place for their juices and the short move down the road hasn't changed a thing in terms of quality or taste. My Kiwi and banana juice filled me up nicely and was perfect with a salad.
The person I was eating with had a sandwich which was neat and tidy with edges cut off and a little bit of couscous on the side. It's the little touches like that which make Honest to goodness different and quirky and will make you keep coming back for more. The ingredients all feel like they are all made with love too. Its probably the same bread as they use in a million other sandwiches around the country every single day but it just tastes better in here for some reason.
Another thing that I like is their Facebook page. They change the menu every single day and post a picture of it to their page. Its only a simple little photo but when you are stuck in a head fuck of a job seeing something like that at 11 can brighten up your day. It gets the taste buds salivating and gets you dreaming about lunch as the rain pounds the window outside and your douchebag boss gives you another stupid task to do. Honest to Goodness isn't expensive. It has lovely dishes and lots of healthy options that don't taste like ass. You leave here feeling good about life and wanting to come back for more. It has taken an awful long time but they've finally sorted out their capacity issues and this will become even more popular than their last little cubby hole. Check it out and get a juice. You'll love it
I am only one person eating there on one day so to give a little balance to the review here are some other people who have eaten there and written about the place...
