I’m looking along a bustling deli counter, wondering what to choose, when I’m stopped in my tracks by a tuna melt. Why? Why is this sandwich still a thing? As the gentleman in front of me in the lunchtime queue cheerfully orders this culinary catastrophe, I’m reminded that my tuna melt prejudice is actually not shared by my fellow lunch-going brethren. People love tuna melts.
It stands out in this particular queue because I’m in The Good Food Store on South George’s St in Dublin, and everything else in the deli counter looks, well, pretty good to me. What marks this deli out is not only its ethos of freshly-prepared food, but its elegant interior and the assortment of yummy goodies for sale. There are bottles of wine, cartons of olive oil, bunches of dried lavender and crockery from Morocco alongside such Irish produce as Sheridan’s chutneys and crackers, Mic’s Chilli sauce, Synerchi Kombucha and beans of Ariosa coffee.
The Good Food Store opened on South Great George’s Street in August 2015, and is actually the second instalment in the brand, with an original, smaller store on Serpentine Avenue in Dublin 4. Behind The Good Food Store stands Vanessa Clarke, whose catering and events company VSC Events (vscevents.ie) has been involved in the project management of food at festivals such as The Electric Picnic (in particular its Theatre of Food), Body and Soul, and Forbidden Fruit. Clarke certainly knows her local food, which explains the well-chosen representatives that line the shelves in The Good Food Store.
Perhaps influenced by that Moroccan crockery for sale, and the pretty Moroccan-influenced tiles on the floor, I order the vegan Moroccan Toasty (€5.90). It’s a large wrap stuffed with roasted vegetables and couscous, served warm. It’s on the dry side but luckily, I’ve added a healthy spoonful of homemade hummus to my small salad box (€4), and it livens the toasty right up. Elsewhere in my salad box, I’ve selected sweetly roasted chunks of beetroot and roasted sweet potato with feta cheese.
The coffee (€2.80 for a flat white) is excellently brewed using the exemplary Ariosa beans. The breads for the daily roast in a roll and other sandwiches are from the Bretzel Bakery in Portobello. All the cakes and some pastries, apart from the croissants and pain au chocolate, are made downstairs in the kitchen. A raspberry financier has a suitably strong kick of almond, with a good crust and a spongy texture on the inside. A few weeks back, I grabbed their breakfast sausage roll to go, and found it to be a flaky delight stuffed with black pudding and sun-dried tomatoes.
The Good Food Store has a roomy area dedicated to those who wish to sit in, with a long communal table and a few counter seats amongst the food store. I should note that food and drinks are all served in takeaway receptacles, just in case you were hoping to eat off for some of that Moroccan crockery.
