On the 11th August, Aaron and I went to Dublin! I booked this little weekend getaway for Aaron's 25th birthday, as tradition, before we went to Dublin we spent hours deciding where to eat, not where to go site seeing, no, but where to eat, as we both have a great love for food, especially fine seafood!
When we first got to Dublin we went straight to get breakfast, as our flight to Dublin was at 7am, we got there for around 8am and by the time we'd done faffing in the airport, it was just past 9am when we got into the centre. I looked at Tripadvisor to find out where the best place to go for breakfast was and the places we chose both had amazing reviews!
On the first day (the 11th), we went to an amazing breakfast cafe called TANG, whilst waiting for TANG to open, as we had 30 minutes to burn we went to Starbucks, I had a caramel cheesecake frappuccino, which tasted more like vanilla ice-cream and Aaron had a hot chocolate, once we finished our drinks we then headed up the road to TANG.
TANG is a beautiful little cafe which is in the city centre of Dublin, which has a 5 out of 5-star rating.
Unfortunately, TANG has very little seating inside, but it does have outdoor seating too, we arrived as soon as it opened, so we were lucky not only to get a seat but a seat that seemed to be the best seat in the house! So I would advise arriving at TANG as soon as they open, as not long after we arrived the place got very busy fast, all the seats and tables were taken, inside and out and there were also people waiting outside for a table to become available.
Aaron and I both agree that this was the best breakfast we had ever had! The food looked beautiful and tasted incredible it was worth every penny and more! (hence why tipped them), we both ordered the same thing which was 'Mushrooms on toast' as it said on the menu, which was ironically simple, as it was a hell of a lot more than just mushrooms on toast!
It was crunchy but soft, toasted sourdough bread, delicious oyster mushrooms (which is a type of mushroom neither of us had tried before), runny poached eggs, topped with chilies, chili oil, and, spring onions, and on the side were splodges of creamy beetroot and lemon yogurt, I'm not quite sure what the spices/herbs were on top of the yogurt, but based on the hashtags Aaron has put on his Instagram picture, I think they're called tamari, herb oil, and dukkha. Aaron also had sausages with his, which he also enjoyed.
as you can see in this bottom picture there are little sausages on the side, this one is Aaron's.
On the second day, the 12th, our breakfast was a little disappointing, we went to another little breakfast cafe called Beanhive, this was rated number 1 on Tripadvisor, so understandably we had high expectations, as this place was meant to be the best breakfast in Dublin city centre.
When we arrived at Beanhive, we waited outside, in the rain to get a seat, as this is another small cafe that has seating inside and out but is still very limited, in fact, Beanhive was smaller than TANG, the tables were extremely close together, even people with a slim figure had to squeeze past other people's tables to get out, I've never had to move so much in one meal to avoid getting other people's butts in my face.
Myself and Aaron both ordered a hot chocolate, I would 100% recommend going here for the hot chocolates, they tasted amazing, and they did little drawings on the top of our drinks which tasted like they were drawn with a coloured syrup.
I then ordered a vegetarian breakfast, I was hoping for meat-free sausage, but no, it came with; beans, toast, hashbrowns, tomatoes, scrambled eggs and a shit ton of peppers. PEPPERS, I've never seen peppers with a breakfast before, so yeah, I was disappointed by this, a personal preference but I just expected something a lot better.
Aaron had a full-Irish breakfast which he enjoyed, that came with; toast, beans, sausage, bacon, mushroom, hash browns, fried egg, white pudding, and tomatoes.
I think if we returned to Dublin we would go elsewhere.
Aaron annoyingly didn't take a picture of his breakfast, which is strange since he always takes pictures of his food and most things in general.
During the day we didn't really go to anywhere in particular for lunch, we went to Starbucks and had a sandwich, we didn't take a picture of that as you can get a Starbucks anywhere, and I also tried Burger King's chicken fries, which I've wanted to try them for ages as Trisha Paytas always raves about them and they were okay, I'd have them again.
However, we did go to this little donut shop called 'The Rolling Donut' they have a huge donut selection and they all looked amazing.
I had the 'Molly Malone' donut, which had a filling of apple and cinnamon, topped with vanilla glaze and biscuit crumbs, with a hot chocolate and Aaron had 'Chocolate Hazelnut Crunch' which is a Nutella filled donut topped with chocolate glaze and chopped hazelnuts, he had this with a can of Coke.
Now, let's talk about dinner, the restaurant we were the most excited to visit, SOLE Seafood and Grill!
I found SOLE on Tripadvisor with amazing reviews (5 out of 5-stars), and once we both looked at the menu we had to immediately book a table and go! The thing that was a huge selling point for us was that they stock King Crab, a crab that is an absolute pain to get hold of as they live below the ice in Norway, divers have to dive under the ice in order to collect the Kind Crabs, hence why it's rather expensive and very few restaurants that stock it (SOLE is actually the first restaurant we've visited that actually serve king crab).
SOLE is the perfect place to be for any seafood lover, a huge selection of seafood, a seafood display when you walk in, including an oyster tank. It is a formal restaurant with well-dressed staff that are extremely attentive, we were served by the manager and a lovely young lady. We spoke to the manager and told him that we wanted to have the Norweigan King Crab, he then offered us to have the King Crab with their 'SOLE'S CAPTAIN SEAFOOD TOWER', which they substituted the lobster for the king crab, this also came with; organic smoked Irish salmon, warm water shrimp, native oyster ( we actually don't like oysters, shocking I know, a seafood we don't like, luckily they exchanged the oysters for prawn cocktail for us), Irish brown crab toes and West Cork steamed mussels in a white wine and garlic cream and we also had a side of fries. IT WAS THE BEST SEAFOOD WE HAD EVER HAD, it was beautiful, we loved every mouth full, we have been to many seafood restaurants and this is definitely the best we have ever been to and would be more than happy to go to again!
Before we had the seafood tower, we shared a starter of Octopus Tempura, which was also beautifully cooked, could have easily eaten more of that, especially with the lemon and garlic mayo.
After the seafood tower we shared a dessert, we had the passion ball, which was passionfruit mousse with a chocolate dome, this was lovely and light, perfect after all that food.
The last restaurant we went to before heading to the airport was the Beef and Lobster, and I'm really sad to end the blog post on a low note, but I didn't enjoy my experience at Beef and Lobster, it wasn't terrible but it wasn't good either.
We came here before our flight home, as you can imagine, we had our overnight bags and we were wearing the clothes we were flying home in, so we weren't all dressed up, but we were still dressed nice.
Although this place sells Lobster, it was not a fancy restaurant, it's more like a diner, however the lady who was serving us kind of made me feel like she thought we weren't good enough to be there, if that makes sense, she kept looking over to us and she wasn't smiling, she came across rather rude, anyway, we ordered our food, I ordered the Lobster roll in a Brioche bun, which was not amazing, it was okay, but it does not have the wow factor that normally comes with Lobster, and Aaron ordered the surf 'n' turf, which was Angus fillet steak and king prawns, I tried one of his prawns and they were really nice, but Aaron didn't really rate the steak very much either, and on the side we both shared truffle and parmesan chips, which were really nice.
Although this place sells Lobster, it was not a fancy restaurant, it's more like a diner, however the lady who was serving us kind of made me feel like she thought we weren't good enough to be there, if that makes sense, she kept looking over to us and she wasn't smiling, she came across rather rude, anyway, we ordered our food, I ordered the Lobster roll in a Brioche bun, which was not amazing, it was okay, but it does not have the wow factor that normally comes with Lobster, and Aaron ordered the surf 'n' turf, which was Angus fillet steak and king prawns, I tried one of his prawns and they were really nice, but Aaron didn't really rate the steak very much either, and on the side we both shared truffle and parmesan chips, which were really nice.
Aaron didn't take a picture of his meal.
I hope you enjoyed reading about where we ate in Dublin, 100% recommend TANG and SOLE Seafood and Grill! Absolutely amazing restaurants, both amazing food, and service! We both hope to visit there again in the future!
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