Spend a wintry day in a gallery or museum: many have good cafes for an afternoon treat, writes Tom Doorley
YOU HAVE UNTIL the end of the month to seize the day and go and see the wonderful centenary exhibition at Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane in Parnell Square. And you can have a peek at Francis Bacon's studio while you're at it.
The reason I bring this up is because the gallery is one of the few cultural institutions, for want of a better phrase, in which you will be reasonably well fed. Tempting though it might be to slip next door and have the set lunch at Chapter One, most of us will find solace in the busy, friendly Brambles Cafe in the basement where, I can report, they do a very decent pea and mint soup.
Fitzer's has been feeding large numbers every lunchtime at the National Gallery in Merrion Square for donkey's years. Little has changed since I started going there as a child. The chicken breast may have prosciutto and mozzarella these days, and I don't know if vegetable korma had been seen in Dublin during my tender years, but the portions are generous, the salads are chunky and the chances of falling into conversation with strangers is high.
I keep meeting people who have never been to the Chester Beatty Museum at Dublin Castle, missing out on the outstanding collection, and the best self-service food in the country, which is served at the Silk Road Cafe. Both are hidden gems and the cooking combines strands from places such as Turkey and Lebanon. The coffee is exceptional, too.
In Cork, the Crawford Gallery is a real haven. Indeed, the cafe here, which is run by Fawn Allen, granddaughter of Myrtle, is a kind of common room for the county. Throughout the day there are great cakes, in the Ballymaloe tradition, and there are chunky, inventive dishes at lunchtime, all served to you at your table. This is a very civilised place in which to unwind.
At the Hunt Museum in Limerick, which is one of the best things about that much-maligned city, there is a cafe called Ducart's where they serve straightforward lunches. This place comes into its own in the warmer months when you can eat on the terrace with the Curragour Falls rushing away below. Probably not a great idea in December, though.
The Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin may not be a gallery in the conventional sense of the word, but it's a very exciting place in many senses (for the full story, visit www.sciencegallery.ie). It also has a remarkable cafe called Flux where the menu is Italian, the coffee remarkably good and the range of juices and smoothies is more than I can cope with.
The cafe at the National Museum in Kildare Street is a lot less ambitious, but it has a certain elegance, with its mosaic floor and marble table-tops, especially at quieter times of day. Soup is always good, there's chunky brown bread and decent salads. At peak times it can get very crowded.
Up in Kilmainham at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (a vast series of galleries in which I could wander for hours) there is a very decent cafe in the basement. This is part of the Itsabagel empire and you can have bagels for breakfast if you want. At Itsa@imma I like the freshly-baked buttermilk scones, and the fish pie (a difficult dish to pull off in a self-service context where bains-maries are used) is surprisingly good. The deeply subterranean feel of the cafe, however, can be a bit gloomy, especially in the depths of winter.
People who enjoy museums and galleries are, of course, a mixed bunch but I reckon that an awful lot of them enjoy good food. Isn't it odd then that relatively few of the really good places to eat in the country are located in such facilities? I'm talking about the kind of cafes and restaurants that genuinely merit the "worth the detour" tag.
I would love to see the stunning room that houses the cafe at the National Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin have a restaurant worthy of the space. This is a shockingly wasted opportunity, however busy the lacklustre, bog-standard current facility may be. The gardens and the cafe deserve something exceptional and there is lots of talent knocking around that could provide it.
And if I have missed a good museum or gallery cafe, do please let me know. tdoorley@irishtimes.com