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GASTRO WORDS Conor Stevens PHOTOS Killian Broderi
ck Liberties Take Spitalfields I spend a not inconsiderable amount of time walking the ‘storied’ streets of The Liberties, in weather fair and foul, in the (admittedly late) morning light and the black of night. I’m not leading one of those rare ‘aul times walking tours or heading up a community-based vigilante collective, although at least one of those things seems like something I could get behind. No, I just happen to live here and am daily led by the nose of our increasingly creaky and dogged dog to zigzag the neighbourhood, following patterns that defy human comprehension. These peregrinations sometimes result in one of us carrying the other home. Always the same one. Nevertheless the often funereal pace does encourage an appreciation of one’s surroundings. While others are blithely pushing on with their blinkered ‘lives’ Ellie is affording me the time to discern the details. Framing things differently really can help with the anger. One such detail that revealed itself to me recently was the spectral outline of the words The Old Dublin on a sign-board above a shop front on Francis Street. I’m not sure it even qualifies as a ‘ghost sign’. It’s been covered in blackboard paint for many years but at a certain angle in a certain light you can just make out the name of a restaurant that once attracted the gastronaughts and apparatchiks of the day. Just imagine it - Gavin Friday every Saturday, table for six. Pádraig Flynn with borscht down his front again. It was an odd proposition in an odd location, with a menu that drew heavily on Scandinavian and Russian cuisines. Orna Mulcahy’s Irish Times review in 2000 drew attention to the great value lunch menu at £13.50 for three courses. You read that 34 right. This in a restaurant with napery in two quite formal dining rooms. Different times. And yet just around the corner on an even more insalubrious stretch (of The Coombe) is a restaurant with a similarly singular bent that appears to be thriving. Spitalfields opened about five years ago from the folks who bought us The Pig’s Ear (latterly Lotus Eaters) in a space that’s been home to a number of public houses, although not all at once. I recall that there was once a crater on the pavement outside where a grenade had apparently exploded. Again, different times. I’m pretty sure that the last time I set foot on the premises it was called Grumpy Jack’s and I was in search of smokes. Almost GBH for a pack of B&H. DM me if you get the reference. For my TikTok fanbase - this is back when corner shops would close at dusk to conserve candle-wax. The notion of retail being convenience-adjacent was still some way off. Hyper-specialism and esoteric opening hours were the order of the day, depending on the day and angle of the sun. The caul-fat stall on Meath Street traded only on oddly numbered Tuesdays at low tide. The coal merchant on Francis Street would sell but sacks of slack when the parish priest was believed to be between vestments in the nearby sacristy. God be with the days. You are less likely to be blown up in The Liberties these days but you’re probably not going to be blown away by Spitalfields either and this is not a bad thing. Sometimes you just want to be fed well by people who know how to do just that. That was the remit for a recent get-together with a former editor and current wife (two distinct individuals) and the place (over two