Dinner in Downtown Dublin Ireland

Our search for a restaurant for dinner on a Saturday night in late September of last year continued after we left the more popular/’hip’ area in the Temple Bar section of Dublin.  No luck there with everything booked or with long lines.  We crossed the River Liffey to the north shore and kept looking for places that could serve us on this busy night. 

We came across The Lotts Café and Bar and decided to check it out.  This time we got lucky!  We were told that if we could be finished with our dinner by a given time, they could fit us in.  Since we had over an hour before we would have to be done eating, we readily agreed!

The interior of The Lotts is ornate and comfortable.  Our table was by the window so we could watch passerby’s as we dined.  We found it interesting that so many restaurants in both Scotland and Ireland were so cautious about ensuring that reservations were honored on time by not seating additional customers.  We are not so careful about the timing here in the USA…

When I saw this sign on this big mirror, I just had to follow the arrow and check out the smallest bar in Dublin!

My curiosity was rewarded… This bar, which is appropriately named “The Snug”, was so small that I actually felt uncomfortable taking this photo!  It was indeed tiny and busy too…

I took this photo just to show how ornate the main dining area bar is at the Lotts Café…with its mirrors, fancy back wall and chandeliers. 

This was an appetizer.  It’s the Bacon and Cabbage Potato Cakes…two crispy potato cakes with bacon mixed in and topped with a poached egg. (9E/$10.80 US) This is something that I’ve never seen in the USA so I had to give it a try… It was very tasty indeed but if it were me serving this dish, I’d put a poached egg on top of both potato cakes.

The first of the entrees was this Mixed Seafood Pasta. (13E/15.60 US) A mix of smoked haddock, cockles, mussels, prawns and squid are cooked in a creamy white sauce and served over fettuccine pasta.  It was very good…and it was also something that you don’t see in the USA.  I’ve never seen cockles on the menu stateside.

Note:

·         A cockle is a small, edible marine bivalve mollusk.  There are 250 species around the world.  The common cockle is widely distributed around the coastlines of Northern Europe with a range extending west to Ireland, north to the Barents Sea, then east to Norway and south as far as Senegal in Africa.

My selection was this Pork Chop entrée with champ mash and topped with an apple cider gravy. (12E/$14.40 US) It was pretty good although the pork chop was a bit overcooked.  That was partly offset via the moisture provided by the cider gravy.

Note:

·         Champ is an Irish dish made by combining mashed potatoes and chopped scallions with butter, milk, cheese and optionally, salt and pepper.  I learned from this experience that I much prefer colcannon, a traditional Irish dish that combines mashed potatoes with cabbage.

This was the chef’s special… (15E/$18.00) It wasn’t detailed on the receipt because it was a nightly special and then I neglected to write it down at the time, so I’m not positive what this entrée was.  However, I seem to remember that it was deep fried chicken cordon bleu with mashed potatoes and mushrooms…

Laurie decided to try the Spinach and Cream Cheese Fettuccine. (10E/$12.00 US) The fettuccine was served with a garlic and cream cheese sauce and Laurie really liked it!

As it turned out, we weren’t rushed at all even though the kitchen was a little slow on this busy night.  Another table turned over early and our replacement diners were seated elsewhere.  Better yet, we all were very happy with the service and the food!

I checked TripAdvisor when I wrote this posting and The Lotts Café and Bar has had 1,441 reviews…with 93% ranking the restaurant as excellent or very good.  Only 2% of the reviewers gave it a poor or terrible score!  We definitely lucked out in our desperate restaurant choice! 

The Lotts Café and Bar is located at 9 Lower Liffey Street in Dublin.  Phone: 353 18727669.  Website: http://thelottscafebar.com/.

When we finished our meal, we headed back to the trolley/tram stop for the ride to our hotel on the light rail system.  The tram was packed for most of the trip back.  The streets in the city center seemed safe enough and the only police officer I recall was working security for a store.  We chatted about the shoplifting problems in the USA and Ireland…

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave

Downtown Dublin Ireland on a Saturday Night!

Saturday night in a major European city… What to do?  We decided to explore the city center!

This was our light rail stop in downtown Dublin.  We’d taken the ‘Luas’ trolley/light rail system from the Kylemore stop.  There were about 11 stops along the way and all the cars really filled up too!

Despite the presence of quality stores like Marks and Spencer in this pedestrian friendly area, we didn’t do very much shopping. 

Marks and Spencer was founded in London in 1884.  Today the company has 979 stores in the United Kingdom, of which 615 are grocery stores.  Internationally, the company has another 454 locations with stores in Ireland, India, Turkey, Russia, Greece, France, Poland, Hungary, Finland and Spain.   Worldwide sales in 2017 were approximately $13.8 billion US.

There were lots of people downtown in the late afternoon…shopping, drinking and dining.  Unlike big cities in the USA, tall buildings are the exception and many structures have been around a long time.   

Not all structures in Dublin are low rise… This view down the busy pedestrian mall shows The Spire of Dublin.  This 397 foot tall stainless steel sculpture was the centerpiece in the regeneration of O’Connell Street, a major thoroughfare/area that had become a bit worn over the years.  The area was cleaned up and brought back to life and the Spire was intended to be a replacement monument for Nelson’s Pillar. 

Nelson’s Pillar was a large granite column that was capped by a statue of Horatio Nelson.  He was a famous British Admiral who is best known for his victory (and death) at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.  Completed in 1809 when Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, the 134 foot tall ‘Pillar’ survived until March of 1966 when it was severely damaged by explosives planted by Irish Republicans…

This is O’Connell Street…formerly known as “Sackville Street”, which it was referred to during the 1916 “Easter Rising”.   The Rising was launched by Irish Republicans to end British rule in Ireland while the United Kingdom was fighting WWI.  This was the most significant Irish uprising since the rebellion of 1798.   FYI…Ireland became a self-governing Dominion of the British Empire in 1922, (Irish Free State), and it officially became a Republic in 1949.

O’Connell Street is Dublin’s main thoroughfare and it’s the city’s widest but not longest street.  It may be one of Europe’s widest urban streets.

Note the statue in the center of the boulevard walkway along O’Connell Street.  This particular statue is of James Larkin.  Larkin was an Irish trade union leader and socialist activist.  He founded the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, the Irish Labour Party and the Workers’ Union of Ireland… Several other statues of famous Irishmen are prominently displayed along O’Connell Street.  To view and learn about them, you can go to https://www.tenontours.com/the-monuments-of-oconnell-street-dublin/.

We tend to stick to small towns, villages and the countryside wherever we travel, so this excursion was a bit unusual for us.  There is a lot of history in Dublin and there is a lot for visitors to experience.  Still, given our limited time in Ireland, we wanted to focus on the countryside.  If we had the time we would have definitely focused on Christ Church Cathedral (ca. 1038), St. Patrick’s Cathedral (13^th century) and the many museums around the city.  To check out some popular sites for visitors around Dublin, go to http://www.dublintourist.com/directory/places_to_visit/.

Well heck…all that walking and exploring eventually required a break of some kind!  We selected The Gin Palace, home to the largest selection of Gin in Ireland, with 156 different brands from all over the world!   

Notes:

·         Gin derives its predominant flavor from juniper berries and its one of the broadest categories of spirits, with all of the various origins, styles and flavors revolving around juniper as the required common ingredient. 

·         In addition to the required juniper, botanicals/flavoring agents for gin often include lemon, bitter orange peel as well as such items as anise, angelica root, orris root, licorice root, cinnamon, almond, cubeb, savory, lime peel, grapefruit peel, dragon eye, saffron, baobab, frankincense, coriander, nutmeg and others…

The interior of The Gin Palace is colorful and ornate with a big Victorian themed bar and they were busy on this early Saturday evening.  We managed to fine a table and all of us ordered gin drinks of one sort or another…one choice being the Premium Gin Sampler Tray.  That included 3 premium gins for 18E/$21.60 US.  The Gin Palace serves food as well but we didn’t want to spoil our dinner…

You can learn more about The Gin Palace and check out their menu at http://www.louisfitzgerald.com/ginpalace#about.  

When we started looking around for other sights and possibly someplace for dinner, I led us to this busy footbridge across the River Liffey to Dublin’s Temple Bar area. 

The Temple Bar (Irish: Barra an Teampaill) is located on the south bank of the river.  The area is promoted as Dublin’s cultural quarter and its lively nightlife is popular with locals and tourists alike. 

This photo is looking east along the River Liffey from the pedestrian bridge.  The Liffey or more popularly, the Ha’penny Bridge was built in 1816.  In 2012, the Dublin City Council removed a large number of ‘love locks’ from the bridge and then in 2013, they removed another 660 lbs. of locks!  Signage now asks people not to put padlocks on the bridge.    

The River Liffey is only about 78 miles long but it supplies much of Dublin’s drinking water as well as for industry.  For much of history, from Viking beginnings of the city up until recent times, the river was used for navigation and trade. 

The Temple Bar area of Dublin is colorful, lively and interesting.  It’s a great place for people watching as well! 

There are various theories as to why the area is named Temple Bar.  One possibility is that it got its name from the Temple family.  Sir William Temple built a house and gardens her in the 1600s and later he served as the provost of Trinity College, serving in that post from 1609 until 1627.  However, it’s more likely that the name was directly borrowed from the Temple Bar district in London…where the main toll-gate into London was located back to medieval times.

We walked around Temple Bar for quite a while…gawking at the sights and the people…before we began looking for a place to have dinner. 

We didn’t realize that we were just a few blocks from Trinity College or we would have wandered over for a look.  The college was founded in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth I as the “mother’ of a new university.  It was modeled after the collegiate universities of Oxford and Cambridge and it’s the ‘newest’ of 7 ancient universities of Britain, Scotland and Ireland. Oxford is the oldest of these universities, having been founded in 1096!

Along with a couple hundred other people, we stopped for a little street performance by this band...

As attractive and appealing as the area is, we finally stopped casually strolling about and starting focusing on a place for dinner!  Good luck with that mission!  It was Saturday night and without a reservation, our mission was daunting.  We certainly couldn’t get into the Oliver St. John Gogarty Pub…that big yellow building…with a line waiting for entry!

We kept looking for a place to eat.  We walked several blocks, checking out the possibilities at Quays Temple Bar, The Old Storehouse, Toscana, The Boxty House, The Temple Bar Pub and even 'Thunderbird'…shown above.  It was all to no avail!  The restaurants were completely booked or packed with patrons. At least my bride was able to see a few horses along the way!

So it was back to the Ha’penny Bridge and across the River Liffey to the less popular and crowded north side of the river!  Coming up in a future posting, we finally found a place for dinner on our first night in Ireland…

That’s all for now… Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them.

Thanks for stopping along and sharing our walking tour of a small part of Dublin’s center city!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave 

Laurie’s Birthday Celebration!

As we’ve gotten older, birthdays have become fairly low key.  Let’s face it, we’re really celebrating the fact that we’re still around and enjoying life…

Nevertheless, Laurie’s ‘low key’ birthday celebration is an annual 2 – 3 month affair…with presents/objects of desire or ‘want’ being fair game along the way.  On her birthday in early December, we typically go out to a restaurant of her choice.  This year, we ate at home on her actual birthday and celebrated with this moist mini-cake from our local Fresh Market. (https://www.thefreshmarket.com/)

The reason that we didn’t go out for a special dinner was that Dawn Marie was flying in to Knoxville the next day and she wanted to take Laurie out to dinner for her birthday.   

Fortunately for me, I was allowed to come along… Of course, the best part about this story was that Dawn Marie flew into Knoxville’s McGhee Tyson Airport and she suggested that Laurie pick someplace really nice in nearby Maryville Tennessee for her birthday dinner! 

The obvious choice to frequent diners like ourselves was The Foothills Milling Company.  We’ve been there several times over the past few years and we think that it’s probably the best restaurant in the Knoxville metropolitan area!

Laurie started out with this lovely Goat Cheese Tart with caramelized onions, Benton’s bacon and a cornbread crust. ($12.00) She was a happy birthday girl!

This appetizer was ‘the bomb’ in a good sense!  It was a flavor avalanche!  The HBC Sandwich consists of pecan wood smoked pork collar, Benton’s bacon and Amish cheddar cheese on sourdough toast, all topped with a fried local farm egg and warm jalapeno cream. ($13.00)

This was the highpoint of my total meal!  I could have eaten 2 or 3 of these and skipped the rest of the food…although it was all quite nice too.

Information regarding Benton’s famous Bacon and Hams can be found at http://bentonscountryhams2.com/.

What would a special birthday dinner be without a nice bottle of cabernet from the Cosentino Winery in California?! ($36.00) (http://www.cosentinowinery.com/)

Tasting notes: Deep crimson in color with sweet and spicy notes of fresh herbs and cloves on the nose.  On the palate, intense flavors of fruit with hints of black pepper.  Ends with great structure and long finish.

Laurie and Dawn really liked this wine…but as red wine and gout don’t co-exist well, I stuck with a beer!

For my entrée, I ordered the Cedar Planked Salmon. ($32.00) The Scottish salmon was marinated and roasted on a cedar plank and it was served with mashed Yukon gold potatoes and roasted asparagus.  I don’t know what the marinade was, but this was an excellent and tasty slab of salmon!  (If you look closely, you will see the embers still burning on one end of the plank...) 

Dawn Marie decided to have the Foothills Meatloaf as her entrée. ($29.00) This meatloaf is stuffed with braised short rib meat and it’s served with tomato chutney, truffle macaroni and cheese plus baby green beans.

Of course, much of the time one’s opinion of an entrée is a matter of personal taste.  Dawn didn’t really care for this meatloaf but she must be the exception because this is a perennial item on the Foothills Milling Company’s menu.  They must sell a lot of it!   

Our birthday girl chose the Surf and Turf for her special meal. ($37.00) Her medium rare Angus beef tenderloin steak came with a shrimp and crab topping and it was served with creole white wine cream, potatoes and baby green beans.  Laurie was very happy with her choice!

Our server took this photo of our little group at the table with our entrées in front of us…

This was our birthday girl’s special dessert!  We didn’t sing to Laurie as it would have been embarrassing in so many ways… (I personally have one of the worst voices that ever tried to carry a note!) 

I’m not sure what any of the desserts were named as I didn’t pay for the meal and therefore I don’t have the detailed receipt to work from.  Foothills Milling Company doesn’t post a dessert menu on their website…but they should!  All of the desserts were excellent…and mine…this last one pictured above…was also huge!  Don’t worry, I managed to force myself to finish it!

Thanks to Dawn Marie, Laurie had a terrific birthday dinner outing!  Service was outstanding and our waiter was quite knowledgeable.  One of the owners, Tommy Vaughan, stopped by and chatted with us as well.  Foothills Milling Company is located at 315 Washington Street in Maryville Tennessee.  Phone: 865-977-8434.  Their website is found at: http://foothillsmillingcompany.com/default.asp?ID=1. 

Currently, TripAdvisor has recorded 476 reviews for this restaurant and 89% of the reviewers gave it an ‘excellent’. 

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by to help us belatedly celebrate Laurie’s birthday!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave

The Road Home after Our Thanksgiving Visits

After our family visits in St. Louis Missouri and Omaha Nebraska, we stayed overnight in Mount Vernon Illinois as we made the long trek home to East Tennessee.  Once we crossed the Kentucky/Tennessee state line, we decided to take some ‘back roads’ through part of Tennessee rather than follow the quicker but boring Interstate System…

These are views of part of the Springfield Town Square Historic District in Springfield Tennessee.  Most of the buildings in this hilltop town square were built between 1890 and 1925.  A total of 34 buildings are included in this National Register of Historic Places Historic District.

The first photo shows the architecturally interesting Chandler-Murphy Family Store Building, ca. 1899.  The 5 little ‘windows’ at the top are really hooded decorative vents… 

The ‘buildings’ at the center of the second photo is really one- two and a half story brick building painted to simulate 2 separate structures.  The 6 small circular windows under the matching brick cornice reveal the truth.   For some reason, perhaps for those little windows, this building is called the Hen House Building and it was constructed ca. 1900.

Springfield Tennessee is the County Seat for Robertson County and the courthouse is the centerpiece for the Town Square Historic District.  It is listed separately in the National Register of Historic Places.  Robertson County was established in 1796 and the first courthouse, a log structure, was built here in the town square.  A second courthouse was built in 1819 and it was replaced by the center portion of this imposing structure in 1879.  The wings of the structure were completed in 1930.

Robertson County has about 70,000 residents.  One local attraction is the Bell Witch Cave which is allegedly haunted.  To learn more about the cave, go to http://bellwitchcave.com/.  To learn about the only legal hanging that ever took place in Robertson County, (a slave killing his ‘master’ with an axe after being whipped), you can read the full story at http://tngenweb.org/robertson/history/waltonhanging.html. 

What the heck…it was time for lunch so we stopped at this Waffle House in White House Tennessee.  Rarely does a road trip go by when we don’t stop at a Waffle House for breakfast or lunch!

As usual, service was efficient and the grill cook was the key to a smooth operation.  I will say that the stress of the Holidays may have been taking a toll as we weren’t greeted when we came in and some of the employees seemed unhappy with life…very unusual for a Waffle House.

Laurie had an Egg and Cheese Melt Sandwich with coffee and a side of crispy hash browns.  The hash brown potatoes were done perfectly!

Waffle House was founded back in 1955 and the company now has over 1,500 locations, all of them open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  Curiously enough, the company’s founders, Joe Rogers and Tom Forkner both passed on during 2017... Joe was 97 and Tom was 98!

I had a Double Cheeseburger with a side of hash browns.  For the first time I realized that I could smother my hash browns with sausage gravy!  Hooray!  It was a winner for sure… I just sprinkled a bit of Tabasco over it and perfection was achieved!

The Waffle House website is found at https://wafflehouse.com/.

Moving on down the road, I came to a screeching stop so Laurie could check out this nice little herd of Painted horses…her favorite critter on earth!

She got out of the car and went over to see the horses…and this particular horse seemed enamored with her as he galloped over to see her!  They spent quite a bit of time talking, with Laurie giving out some hands-on petting and kissing as well!

While Laurie was busy with the horses, I noticed some cattle in a pasture up on a hill across the road.  They looked different than most cattle that we see in Tennessee so I zoomed in for a better view…

Yup…Texas Longhorn Cattle in Tennessee!  The Texas Longhorn is known for its characteristic horns which can extend to over 5 feet 9 inches from tip to tip for bulls and 6 feet 9 inches for steers and sometimes even exceptional cows. 

In 1927, the breed was saved from near extinction by members of the United States Forest Service who collected a small herd to breed in the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma.  They were cared for largely as curiosities for many years but the breed’s longevity, resistance to disease and ability to thrive on marginal pastures quickly revived the breed as beef stock.  Texas Longhorns with elite genetics can often bring $40,000 or more at auction with a record of $380,000 being set for a cow and heifer calf last March at auction in Fort Worth Texas.

Cruising east along state highway 25 through Tennessee in the general direction of the Knoxville, we arrived in town of Gallatin, the county seat for Sumner County.   This handsome old house is the home of the Sumner County Museum.  

The house was built ca. 1813 and it was purchased by William Trousdale in 1836.  Trousdale (1790 – 1872) was a soldier and politician.  He served as governor of Tennessee, was our United States Minister to Brazil, fought under Andrew Jackson in the Creek War, the War of 1812 and the Second Seminole War.  He also commanded the U.S. 14^th Infantry in the Mexican-American War.  For his actions at the Battle of Chapultepec, Trousdale was brevetted to Brigadier General by President James K. Polk.

The house was Trousdale’s home until his death in 1872.  After the last member of the family died in 1899, the home was deeded to the local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and it now serves as a museum.  To learn more about the museum and local history, go to http://sumnercountymuseum.org/.     

Gallatin’s First Presbyterian Church is an American Presbyterian and Reformed Historical Site.  It is also listed in the National Register of Historic Places.  This is the oldest church building in Gallatin that has been in continuous use.  The congregation was organized in October of 1828 and the church was completed in 1837.  The sanctuary of the church was used as a hospital for Union Troops during the Civil War... 

As we moved along TN Hwy. 25 east, we came to a detour that forced us to go north on TN Hwy. 80, then east and then south on TN Hwy. 85.  Parts of Hwy. 85 were a bit twisty…and a sign warned trucks and RV’s to avoid the road.  Along the way we came to a viewpoint overlooking the Cordell Hull Lake/reservoir.  

The 87 foot high Cordell Hull Dam is located about 40 miles east of Nashville Tennessee near the town of Carthage.  The dam is on the Cumberland River and it was completed in 1973.  The lake covers about 12,000 acres.  The dam and lake are not part of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s extensive dam and reservoir system, but rather is operated by the United States Corps of Engineers.  It does generate up to 100 megawatts of electricity. 

Factoids:     

·         I didn’t know it but the United States Corps of Engineers operates about 300 dams and lakes across the country!  To view the list, go to https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:United_States_Army_Corps_of_Engineers_dams&pagefrom=Melvern+Lake#mw-pages.

·         The Army Corps of Engineers was founded on June 11, 1775, making it 242 years old!  The organization employs 37,000 people and most of them by far, are civilians. 

·         The Army Corps of Engineers facilities produce 24% of all of the United States’ hydroelectricity!

      Just one more photo... Laurie took this picture of the 'super moon from our back deck and I thought that it was a dandy shot!

That’s all for now… Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them.

Thanks for stopping by for a ‘back roads’ tour! 

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave