Tom Doorleyreviews Cake Café, Dublin 8
Was I imagining it or was there talk, not so long ago, of encouraging a "cafe society" in this land of pints and dry-roasted peanuts? A dream of being able to have a beer with a few tapas at the Irish equivalent of the bar au coin? A vision that involved forging an alliance between drink and food as a contrast to our traditional rake of pints?
It seems to have been shot down, which begs the question of how our wretched "licensed trade" manages to wield such political power. Can it be that our publicans are the modern equivalents of Archbishop McQuaid?
Anyway, I visited two cafes of late. The first was the Atrium at Sligo's impressive Model Arts and Niland Centre, where pretty eastern European waitresses delivered dishes to tables while having no idea of who had ordered what. My French toast with Cooleeney cheese, spinach and allegedly caramelised onions eventually turned up, but before my soup. I had to produce my receipt to prove that I had, indeed, ordered soup. As the soup was consumed, my curious and not very successful French-toast concoction withered in the oven.
Someone needs to grasp the reins here.
What a joyful contrast the Cake Cafe makes. Michelle Darmody's minute establishment, on a lane behind Camden Street in Dublin, provided one of the best simple meals I've had in ages. My only regret is that they were out of a thing called, I think, orange chocolate loaf, which is, as I discovered on a previous recce, the stuff of dreams.
We kicked off with a shared dish of Irish tapas: chorizo, salami, little pieces of sharp, fresh goat's cheese, roasted peppers, olives and good bread.
Then we moved on to mains. There was a brilliant take on beans on toast: cannellini beans in a rich tomato concassé with chunks of sausage served with buttered slices of toasted home-made bread. This rib-sticker cost €5.80.
Then there was the savoury tart of the day, which was based on the most buttery, crumbly shortcrust pastry you can imagine. The topping involved sweetly caramelised onions and lashings of melted Cashel Blue, a combination, with the pastry, of rustic perfection. This, with its little salad, came to a mere €6.80.
Dessert here means cake, as the cafe's name implies. There was a very, very good lemon slice, which is a totally inadequate name for something so quintessentially yummy. It was a shallow square of rich but very sharp tray bake of which I could happily eat about a kilo a day. The base was crisp, the top was vaguely meringuey and the interior was moist and intensely lemony. This description is as inadequate as the name, I know.
There was also a buttermilk sponge cake, or slice thereof, which was like the best kind of Victoria sponge crossed with Madeira cake that you can possibly imagine: substantial yet ethereal, dry but not too dry, impregnated with the scent of vanilla.
An espresso was short, strong and on the button; a long macchiato was, as it should be, like a turbocharged and short cappuccino, the sort you get in Milan, if you can pass yourself off as a local.
With a couple of glasses of fresh and dry Mâcon and a glass of oaky Spanish red that was the only thing you could possibly think of putting with the beans on toast other than a mug of strong tea, plus a large bottle of water, the bill for this utterly lovely little lunch came to €46.90.
You won't find the Cake Cafe in the restaurant guides. I wouldn't have found it, either, were it not for the food photographer Mike O'Toole and the stylist Ann Marie Tobin. When people like them enthuse about a cafe (and its old-fashioned, mismatched crockery) I sit up and pay attention. I hope you do too.
Cake Cafe, 62 Pleasants Place, Dublin 8, 01-4789394
Wine choice:
I don't remember ever having coming across the wines in the Cake Cafe's little selection, but the two that we tried - a decent dry white Mâcon and a Spanish red called La Lurra - were just right for our lunch. The white was crisp and fresh, an antidote to commercial New World Chardonnay. The red was chunky, fruity and oaky, with a grown-up complement of tannins on the finish. A generous glass cost €5.50.