Silk Road Cafe review

The Silk Road Cafe is a gem of a cafe thats hidden away in the Chester Beatty Library in the grounds of Dublin Castle. Despite being in the centre of Dublin its not a place I would ever think of going to. I only ended up visiting after a friend mentioned that our maternity leave needed a bit more culture. Five of us with our five small people went along for a Wednesday lunch time visit last week.

Food - As the name suggests the food is heavily slanted towards what you might find on the silk routes of old - think falafel, moussaka and curries. I had the falafel plate with 4 salads, my choice included tabouleh and stuffed vine leaves. My friends had moussaka and curries. All the mains are around the 9-10 Euro mark and hearty enough to keep you going for a long day of sightseeing/babyschlepping. They have an amazing selection of cakes (pictured above) which through some amazing feat of willpower were avoided on this visit!

Accessibility - The cafe is on the ground floor of the Chester Beatty Library and was no problem to access. The entrance had automatically opening electric doors as did the entrances to all the library floors

Changing facilities - Excellent. Theres a separate changing room (without loo) which has a large fixed ledge for changing.

Highchairs - Only 2 available

Space for buggy - Plenty. We, along with 5 babies and buggies, sat in the atrium area and there would have been space for a lot more.

Service - The cafe is self service style but the staff were really helpful and brought dishes to the table for a number of us that went to the counter carrying babies.

Table booking - Not needed for a weekday lunch






























Overall rating - 4.5/5 - Great value for really hearty tasty food. Im marking it down a half mark only because I fancied something a little lighter today and everything was quite heavy for a lunchtime feed. I will definitely be back here again when Im a little hungrier than today.

Baby friendly rating - 5/5 - Of all the places Ive been since having thelittlefoodie I felt more comfortable here than anywhere else. It might just be me, but often I feel like a bit of a nuisance taking up space with my screamy baby. We lounged around for a few hours chatting and drinking coffees and didnt feel that we were disturbing anyone. At one point a member of staff of the library even welcomed us and the babies and asked for our opinion on the new changing room. There are quite a few of the salads and side vegetables that would be perfect for baby led weaning (all of us had food with us today though)

The damage - €13 for a large cappuccino and falafel plate with 4 salads.

Levi Roots interview

A few weeks ago I was contacted by a PR agency asking would I be interested in interviewing Levi Roots. My first thought was that they obviously think Im someone other than the writer of this food blog, maybe someone who makes their living out of this rather than just typing away to myself here. My second thought was that they were going to use me to spread the cultish word of Levi Roots, which I suspect is a lot easier to do by asking bloggers than to get a national newspaper to do the job. My third thought was that it didnt matter a hoot why they were asking and I didnt even have to publish anything if I didnt want to but that it was a good chance to talk to an entrepreneur in the food business who might be able to give me some of the secrets to his success and that if I was lucky I might just get him to sing to me or ask what shampoo he uses on those dreadlocks of his.

a very giddy me and a very bling Mr. Levi Roots

What can I tell you about Mr. Roots that you dont already know if you've seen him on the television (I hadnt). He's charming, interesting, inspiring, a real dad (7 kids, all of which he seems to have brought up) and someone that you immediately want to bring for a pint or home for dinner

I suspect that ready meals arent really his thing given his love for cooking but he seems to have this desire to spread the word on Caribbean food and to be fair the ingredients on his packets are not as crazily processed as some packaged foods would be. His Reggae Reggae sauce is now second in the UK only to Heinz Ketchup with companies like Wetherspoons and Subway using it. One of his favourite things in the world is still to cook food at home after wandering around to buy the ingredients and eat home cooked food, the other being his music which he realises he has had to tone down for his new sauce enjoying followers. He did admit that he had never eaten home cooked food in Ireland yet but declined the offer for some leftover rhubarb tart I had at home.

He has had a fairly colourful life so far but is determined to make things right for his kids, two of whom run a restaurant that he set up and provide school meals from there every day. Knowing where he comes from and the fact that he has had to work hard is evident when speaking to him and he speaks to kids in schools regularly about how he started his business, many of whom will no doubt look to him as a mentor in future. He explains to me that giving up the recipe for the sauce was tough, tough to hand over the baby he created with his family in his kitchen to a company but Im pretty sure that selling 50,000 bottles a week has soothed some of that pain.

When asked about the struggle to get investment he explained that he's glad he didnt give up on his passion and focus. He could have renamed his sauce, taken the "Reggae Reggae" out of it (my suggestion was Mr. Roots' brown sauce) and not told Bank Managers that he would sell more than Heinz and got some decent funding far earlier. That was never the an option for him though and he has no regrets after working on it for years honing his sauce and his business plan. He sees this as key to starting a business, having passion and focus. He reckons that now is the ideal time to be focusing on starting a business, having plenty of time to get ideas and business plans together before banks start lending again.

The review bit:
There are a lot of reasons I might be the wrong person to be reviewing microwave ready meal dinners given that I dont have a microwave, I try to avoid ingredients I cant find in my kitchen (none/few in most of the dishes) and if I do find something I like Im more likely to try and reproduce it than go out and buy them up from a supermarket fridge. I really didnt have much interest in the bag of foods I was given as I walked out of the room and expected not to write about them at all but given that they were actually not all that bad they deserve a quick review.

• Reggae Reggae Chicken with butternut squash rice (medium)- tasty although the butternut kind of dried and hardened in the oven. 
• Puerto Rican stylee chicken rice with roast peppers (medium)- Ive never been to Puerto Rico so wouldnt really know Puerto Rican style food if it hit me in the head so I was surprised, apparently olives are a key ingredient. This was the only one of the 3 dishes that didnt have oven instructions on the back so not all that surprisingly the plastic container melted in the oven.
• Levi's Caribbean Hot chilli Beef with seasoned rice (hot) - this was by far my favourite, really tasty and nicely warm, the kind of dish that would be fantastic to have when youre starving and dying for something really tasty.

If anything I was a little disappointed by the heat in the dishes. I have no frame of reference, not having ever eaten any Caribbean food before and living in a country with few people from the Caribbean. If nothing else I applaud Levi Roots for spreading the good news and inspiration. As I said though given the lack of microwave Im more likely to be trying to figure out how to make these myself than buying in bulk

P.S. He didnt sing for me or tell me what shampoo he used unfortunately 

2009, the year that was

A review of a year where I gave up posting in August? Why not? Maybe it will help explain the lack of white noise from these parts.

I resolve to come here more often in 2010, to remind myself to cook new things more often and to eat in some of the places Ive been dying to eat for years (el bulli is open for reservations if

anyone wants someone to come with them)

Some of my food related highlights of 2009:

• Travel, lots of it - Barcelona (mmmm the hot chocolate), Paris (pastries!), India (amazing street food), New York (pizza), Munich and Berlin for the gluhwein at Christmas
• Living in Granada and eating tapas on an almost daily basis in the lovely Bodega Casteneda
• Travelling around Spain and eating fresh fish and the most amazing tapas and wishing I could learn enough Spanish to move to Cadiz
• 3 months in Ballymaloe cookery school which sometimes feels like it was a dream until I decide to make croissants for breakfast or whip up bearnaise to go with my steak
• Steak! I didnt even eat steak this time last year. Lamb,Pork, Chicken livers - all new!
• Rather than reviewing mince pies as I did last year making bucketloads of mincemeat and mince pies (best pastry recipe) and then spending a whole month feeding them to neighbours,friends and family
• Putting up shelf after shelf in my tiny kitchen for all the cookbooks that have come my way and the files from Ballymaloe
• Getting a shiny new Kenwood and a food processor (which I never thought I would need and now cant live without)
• Eating at The Cliff House hotel which was fabulous even if the head chef wasnt too keen on my use of words for him
• Fishing!
• Meeting some amazing artisan producers from around Ireland
• Getting to know my local butchers on a first name basis
• Convincing people I know to grow veg on their balconies and apartment rooves
• Growing beetroot although not very successfully
• Deciding to keep hens and half building a hen house (more to come on that this year)
• Being inspired over and over again
• Almost completely removing processed foods from my diet (and introducing a lot of butter)
• Catering and working in a restaurant kitchen

2009 was a year of making things happen. I left my job and spent 6 months following my foodie interests and had the time of my life. I then came back to reality with a thud and returned to office life, but somewhere out there that may all change again in future.

Wishing you all a fantastic 2010.

Green Saffron Spice Review

Since a trip to Middleton farmers market earlier this year I have been raving about Green Saffron spices. These are spices imported by a lovely company directly from India and mixed into blends that any eejit who is a bit afraid of the intricacies of Indian food can easily use. They arent so easy to get in Dublin but if youre in Temple Bar market on a Saturday Len at the muesli and lentil stall normally has a selection of a few and is more than obliging to bring more for you if you want them the following week (Len brought me up more chai mix than I could possibly ever need after electric picnic when I was missing the chai tent).



Masala Gosht was my latest very easy attempt at impressive Indian food. Theres nothing difficult about making a fantastic meal with these spices as you will see from the recipes, normally all you need is the meat, tinned tomatoes, some ginger, garlic and onions and youve got yourself a better Indian meal than you would get at all but the best Indian Restaurants. It may not look too appetizing to the right but it was yum!

I have made a number of these recipes over the last few months and have a constant stock of made up food in the freezer from them. The Dahl (best comfort food there is), Bengali Tiger Prawns and Jalfrezi come particularly highly recommended from me.