Dingle has gained a new eating place, albeit at the expense of another.  The coffee and chocolate café, Heavenly Sins, on Green Street is no more.  It has metamorphosised to become the Garden Café

 

It's pretty much opposite the church and one wonders if there was divine intervention in seeing the demise of Heavenly Sins.

 

Mind you, there just might be some tongue-in-cheek by the new proprietors in renaming it 'The Garden'.  Are the sins to become more Original than heavenly?

 

They seem to have got off to a flying start.  When I had lunch there with my daughter on a cold, wet, December day, the place was chocker, which bodes well for the busy summer season to come.

 

The restaurant has had a makeover inside and they have somehow managed to give the place a warm, relaxed, lived-in atmospohere in the short time since they opened their doors, and the glowing fire was very welcome on the day that was in it.

 

I ordered a carmelised onion tart with smoked salmon salad with a glass of the house red to keep it company.

 

The wine came in the most enormous wine glass I've ever been given in a restaurant.  It must have been over 10 centimetres in diameter (that's about four inches in old money), and it was a real pleasure to drink the decent red from it.  The large opening allowed the wine to develop faster than it usually does and you could taste the difference with each sip.

 

The tart was a success.  The sweet-tasting onion was encased in a good homemade pastry, though I had always assumed that a tart had an open top and by covering it in pastry it became a pie.  No matter.  I probably drift through life with such a thousand misconceptions.

 

The stack of smoked salmon strips alongside the salad provided a good foil for the tart, and the whole made for a very satisfying light lunch.

 

My daughter had a courgette and goat's cheese quiche and she sang its praises.  Goat's cheese must first have been made quite early in civilisation but, before the food revolution in the past two or three decades ago, you would have been looked at as if you had two heads if you so much as mentioned it, let alone ate it.  Now it is commonplace, and some very good Irish made goats cheese can be had.

 

We were both loathe to leave the fireside so we moved on to the dessert menu.  I had a slice of spice cake and, with the cinnamon and clove flavours, it seemed to be the right sort of thing to be having at this time of year, like mulled wine.

 

My companion had the fresh fruit pavlova.  Maybe she wanted reminding of warmer times.

 

Our bill, including the wine and some very good coffee came to €35.  I'll go again, both for lunch and perhaps to spend the late afternoon with a glass of red wine and a newspaper.

 

Green Street

Dingle