LUCKY LUNCHERS: It's hard to miss the new eatery on South William Street, Dublin 2. A yellow-green awning hangs over street-side seating and shouts its name, "Lunch!", in large letters. Also hard to miss are the queues of people waiting for calzone pizzas to take out or eat in.
The dish is Lunch!'s speciality but you'll also find other pizzas. Inside, there's a bustling atmosphere, benches and simple tables, and an aquarium is to be installed in the fanlight of the building's Georgian doorway. At peak time, this isn't a place to sit and linger, but Lunch! (despite the name) also serves breakfast from 8am, and owner Dave O'Brien plans to transform the place in the evening to a pizzeria/wine bar. At present it opens until 7.30pm, and 9.30pm Thur-Sat. Lunch! 63 South William Street, Dublin 2 (01-6771546). And BTW, there's another Lunch! on Lombard Street East, Dublin 2.
Eoin Lyons
TRÈS CHER
The latest fad in our house was inspired by a re-run of Moonstruck, that movie in which Cher, improbably, plays a somewhat desperate spinster living amid three generations in Brooklyn. Early in the film, her mother slaps a piece a bread on a frying pan, crafts a hole in the centre with the rim of a glass, and cracks an egg into the middle. Voila. Egg in toast instead of egg on toast. This immediately made us hungry, so we repaired to the kitchen, sprayed rather than doused the frying pan with olive oil, and experimented with both white pan (ho-hum) and with La Brea rosemary and olive oil bread (yum). We then got fancy, using heart and star-shaped cookie cutters, finishing the egg off under the grill. Next week? Egg on face.
Patsey Murphy
GLASS ACT
Full marks to Town Bar & Grill, the new restaurant below the Mitchell & Son wine shop, on Kildare Street in Dublin, for having the courage to focus exclusively on Italy and California in a wine list carefully chosen to complement its Cal-Ital cuisine. Better still, all wines that cost less than €50 a bottle are also available by the glass. It's at 21 Kildare Street, Dublin 2 (01-6624724).
BOTTOMS UP
To celebrate becoming National Off-licence of the Year 2005, Cheers-Gibneys, in Malahide, is holding a wine and beer festival on Monday, April 18th, from 5pm to 10pm. Wines, beers and foods from five continents will be on offer. Tickets cost €15 (half the proceeds go to Malahide Community School) from the off-licence.