By this stage I think you will all know how much of a fan I am of gardens and equally of how much of a fan of food I am, so the reason why I wanted to have dinner in a secret garden will be of no surprise.
I have been following Harry Colley and Cuan Greene and their pop up restaurants for some time and have wanted to go to one of them since I discovered Dublin Pop Up. But unfortunately there are only a limited number of spaces at each of Dublin Pop Up’s events and I have been too slow to secure a space.
So you can imagine how much I wanted to go to their newest pop up restaurant when I heard about it. The Secret Garden Dublin combined two of my favourite things food and gardens. I had the pleasure to go to The Secret Garden on Thursday night which happened to be my birthday so it was a super night to try out Dublin’s IT restaurant.
The night itself did not disappoint and was one full of surprises. The garden itself was the kind of thing any gardener would love to have dinner in. Everything from the large communal tables scattered with plants and candles to the umbrella covered roof and bathtub wine cooler were things out of a gardener’s dreams. Well in my opinion it was and I would not mind having a few of its features in my own garden.
Then there was the food and it simply was amazing! In the lead up to Thursday’s dinner I had to enviously sit at home watching as people raved about it on Facebook and Twitter. And did it live up to all the hype! The whole six course meal was created by Harry and Cuan under the theme of Irish Nostalgia and used all Irish produce.
Of the six courses one that sticks out in my head , apart from the dessert (I am a big dessert person!), was the Bloody Mary which was made with vodka macerated celery, tomato foam, sundried tomatoes, grissini and tomato water snow. It really was something else a great combination of textures and flavours.The whole meal was not your average birthday dinner!
At the end of the dinner came the real secret behind The Secret Garden that had captivated Dublin for five days. It was revealed that The Secret Garden was in fact The Lidl Secret Garden. The majority of ingredients used in the dinner, apart from a few that are not sold in Lidl all came from the retailer.
The second secret behind the garden was that over the five days it raised €12,000 from its lunch and dinner bookings which was matched by Lidl and meant that €24,000 was donated to Barretstown at the end of the pop up restaurant’s five day run.
Here is hoping Harry and Cuan combine food and gardens again very soon!!
My Name is David Corscadden and I have just finished my degree in horticulture from UCD. I have a keen interest in wildlife friendly gardens or as I like to call them “Wild Gardens”. I have in the last year taken a u-turn in what I thought I would do after college. I have moved more in to the literature side of horticulture and plan to do a masters in journalism next year.
Source: Beyond The Wild Garden – Dining in a Secret Garden – David Corscadden
