On The Trail Of Fabulous Food

Here’s the thing. Send me abroad – to Australia, say – and, on top of the thousands of miles it’ll take me to get there, I’ll travel hundreds, or perhaps thousands more in order to explore the country’s furthest reaches.** Here in Dublin, however, what with the day-to-day business – and busy-ness – of living, there are plenty of must-see items on my doorstep that must, it seems, remain decidedly unseen.

Certainly, if I were in almost any other part of the world, I’d be first in the queue for any kind of food-led tour. Here at home, while I’d known about the Dublin Tasting Trail for quite some time, it wasn’t until I happened to talk to Eveleen Coyle, one of the founders of Fabulous Food Trails, that I took up an invitation to join one of their city-based walking and tasting tours. When it came down to it, it was an easy sell, requiring only that I swap my normal Saturday morning routine for a two and a half hour food-focused jaunt around the city centre. Done and deal were the words that sprang to mind.

Going on a food trail? You'll want a guide who knows their onions (and their garlic too).

Though Eveleen says that they get a mix of locals and tourists on their tours (with the Dublin Tasting Trail running run once a week at present), when I rocked up to the city centre meeting point on a dull and damp February morning, almost all of the people in the group were Irish. Despite the economic doom and gloom that abounds these days, I took that as a rather healthy sign for the potential of home-grown food-based tourism (not to mention the fact that the Fab Food Trails folks must be doing something right). They also appear to have the weather gods on their side, as our guide Róisín told us that in three and a half years, she has only twice had to lead the tour in the rain. She did qualify that by saying she meant “proper rain” – drizzle or the occasional spit from the sky didn’t count (and this is Ireland after all, home of the “soft day, thank God”).

After an initial chat about Ireland and our food culture through the years, Róisín brought us to places that (for me) were a mix of the familiar – like Sheridan’s Cheesemongers and Liston’s Food Store – and the unexpected, some places I had heard of and others whose doors I had never before darkened; talk of food was sprinkled with snippets of Dublin history and punctuated by purveyors offering samples of their finest edible wares.

Listons of Camden Street:
one of the many sources of good food on the trail

It turned out to be an entirely pleasant (and filling) way to spend a morning (and, true to form, the proper rain held off until after we were done). It also made clear the fact that, really, you don’t have to travel far to be a tourist (though I’m still open to offers on the Australia front, mind). It was also a reminder (and this is no bad thing) that I should visit The Pepper Pot more often and that everyone needs a lemon slice from The Cake Café in their lives.

Fab food on the trail, clockwise from top left:
brownies and lemon slices at the Cake Cafe; savage sausage rolls at Lolly & Cooks;
bagels with Burren Smokehouse salmon at The Pepper Pot; potato rosti at Listons