In the children's rhyme, the mother's cupboard was famously bare – something you can't say of this new, already jammed, restaurant north of the Liffey, writes CATHERINE CLEARY
WE LOVE Yottam Ottolenghi in our house. By “we” I mean the adults in the house, although I’ve passed off his smokey aubergine croquettes as “vegetarian chicken nuggets” with some success. The London-based chef’s cookbook is a blast of freshness into a daily dinner. It helps that we live in Dublin’s Middle-Eastern quarter with preserved lemons, sumac and large sacks of gram flour all staples on supermarket shelves on Clanbrassil Street.
Mr Ottolenghi has nothing to do with Brother Hubbards, a new lunch spot on Dublin’s Capel Street, but it reminds me of his food. It’s in the sadly-gone Wolfe’s Bistro which closed down last year. Wolfe’s served food on two floors, Brother Hubbards just has the ground floor with an interior designer occupying the space upstairs. I went along with the intention of giving it a small look. After all, it’s the three Ss: soup, salads, sandwiches. How fascinating can that be? Turns out there’s something very interesting going on here.
The place couldn’t have had a softer opening if they’d blanketed the floor in rugs knitted from kitten hair. In their first days they had no sandwiches. The menu still has an exhortation to “please bear with us while we try to get things right”. It’s been a slow and careful approach to food, tiptoeing around us customers like we’re made of blown glass.
My first question is: do you have tables outside? It’s a scorcher because God loves barristers and they’re on their Whitsun law vacation. Otherwise this place would be even busier as it’s a stroll from the Four Courts. But despite the tropical conditions there is no seating in the courtyard at the back. The outdoor furniture is “being made” and hasn’t arrived yet. I am on the verge of offering them a lift to Ikea in the spirit of seizing the sun.
However, there’s a level of precision and preciousness going on here that hasn’t been assembled with an allen key and a couple of thumps of a hammer. The interior is painted a tasteful elephant grey and the furniture is minimalist pale wood. The menu has a soup, three or four sandwiches (if you include the vegetarian option) and three salads.
I’m meeting two friends for a casual early lunch and we’re one of the first groups here. One friend is so casual as to be barely recognisable in shades and a baseball cap. There are apologies that we might have a 10-minute wait for food. It’s worth every second (even though it’s more like 20 minutes in the end). Most fresh lunch salads are made before you eat your breakfast, either pre-chopped in the early hours of the morning or the night before, cling-filmed and left ready for assembly. The food we get is not like this.
We get two raspberry, apple and rose (which the shades-wearer thought might be rosé wine) smoothies. Despite the lack of wine they’re delicious, though I’d have preferred a real glass as opposed to the plastic takeaway cup. There’s homemade orange and lemon barley water that’s a taste of childhood. By now I’ve phoned someone and asked them to collect my children. A quick bite is turning into a long lunch.
A salad plate rises above that ho-hum description. It’s got chunks of cucumber dressed with a chili and black and white sesame seed dressing. Beside it there’s beetroot and celeriac remoulade in a light yoghurty dressing with walnuts and chives and then there’s moghrabieh (a large Lebanese cous cous) beads the size of peas with lentils, butternut squash, radish, coriander and lemon. It is a plate of delicious fresh flavours. There’s a small pot of hummus with sesame seeds and cumin on top and perfect sourdough bread.
The other lunches are an excellent chicken sandwich and a half-sandwich, dollop of salad with a pitch-perfect pea soup, light, fresh, vividly green with an orange swirl of harissa spooned on top.
By now the place has filled with sit-in diners and a long lunch queue. A friend who’s lunching at another table with colleagues finds out that they ran out of food, sold every crumb in the building, by 3.30pm the day before.
A brownie looks underwhelming until it’s tasted and someone threatens to re-enact the scene from When Harry met Sally. A flourless orange and almond cake with chocolate ganache is fabulous; a cinnamon and walnut scroll heartbreakingly soft and fresh.
Good coffees and the bill for a hugely-enjoyable lunch for three comes in under €40. Go early, be prepared to wait for a table. Your patience will be rewarded.
Lunch for three with coffees and desserts came to €38.80
No lunchtime highlights at Marks Spencer's rooftop cafe
At the opposite end of the spectrum was a recent lunch in Marks Spencer's rooftop café at the Grafton Street store. Nothing appalling but nothing very good either. I waited with my three boys, as if invisible, to be served before finally flagging down a passing waitress.
The children's meals: two pizzas and a chicken curry came with admirable mini side salads. My hummus and pitta was far from fine. The hummus had that slight brown crust that comes from waiting too long in its bowl. The carrot sticks were cracked and watery from a post-chopping life that was just too long.
We had to flag down another waiter to get the free piece of fruit that comes with the kids' lunches (again it's admirable that they do this but I'm not sure it would have been offered had we not asked for it).
The three babyccinos at 70c each were a hit (frothy milk and mini marshmallows). It's a busy, convenient mass-catering venue but these days you can do so much better.
Lunch for one adult and three children came to €25.40.
