Review 10: 10 Years Later –– Goose on the Loose, Kevin Street, Dublin 2
A decade between visits, we return to a familiar favourite and find that even though the world around has changed this cafe still speaks to us in the same way
A lot has changed over the last decade, but the Full Irish fry at Goose on the Loose has not.
Ten years ago today we hit publish on our first *ever* restaurant review on our site, which was still a dot-wordpress-dot-com domain.
March 7th 2013, we put out into the world a quite short, very basic overview of Goose on the Loose on Kevin Street with turns of phrase like “cute and kitsch”, “a mix of menu pickings” and “the large coffees packed a nice punch” –– no wonder we were never really taken seriously back then, though we took ourselves intensely seriously.
GotL became a bit of a local for us, as we lived a couple minutes’ walk away, in a house share on Malpas Street right beside The Fumbally. We had these naïve but grandiose notions that we were going to cover the “real” Dublin. Those little under-the-radar, good value spots that seemed to be overlooked by the bigger players and louder voices; that was our shtick. We were in our early twenties, working our way from the bottom of the career ladder up and eking out our own little take on a cosmopolitan lifestyle.
We were fastidious. We were going to pay our way, and eat in each place twice, if not three times, to get the best overview. Different dishes, different times of day, different staff or levels of service. We clearly hadn’t a clue about budgeting or economics either. But that was the first proper post that launched GastroGays, and here we are, still writing, a decade on.
At the time there was little happening around Clanbrassil Street. The hipster oasis of The Fumbally was still semi-under the radar and there was scarcely a hotel within stone’s throw. Now, most corners of Dublin 8 bear the weight of big name hotel chains like Maldron, Aloft, Moxy and Hyatt amidst lavish student housing. In 2012/2013 it was more around Wexford and Camden Streets that the interesting stuff was happening, like Bunsen, BoBo’s, Green 19 and The Cake Cafe…
We had to wait a few more years beyond that before the likes of Hang Dai, Delahunt, Assassination Custard and Pickle cropped up and even a few more after until Franks, Sprezzatura, Lucky Tortoise, Big Fan Bao, Network, Mister S, Chimac, Uno Mas and more collectively turned Aungier-Wexford-Camden into Dublin’s half-mile dining highway.
It’s only when we really try to cast our minds back that we notice how different the same streets look in 2013 and in 2023. We’ve fundamentally changed, too. Within those last ten years we left Dublin for five years in London, then moved back to Ireland but based ourselves in Drogheda rather than the capital. We turned what was the beginnings of a hobby into a full-time, two-person job. Within ten years of that first blog post we’d somehow made the jump from blogger to national newspaper critic –– the first of our kind, but certainly not the last.
Then, one of us found ourselves in the last few months back working in Dublin every day, and a couple of minutes’ walk once again from this particular cafe.
We joked about a year into our blogging adventures - which began as information-led restaurant “overviews” rather than highly critical reviews - that our particular skill was in helping places close down. Like clockwork, about six months after being covered by us those same places would be resigned to dust. Eden Bar + Grill on South William Street (now Dakota), Louise Bannon’s NEDE on Meeting House Square in Temple Bar and toastie hot spot Dublin City Food on Andrew Street (which has endured endless reincarnations since, currently Portuguese cafe Lisboa).
Bearing in mind, this was as Ireland pulled itself up from the wreck of the financial crash so the industry was on wobbly ground, but we began to scratch our heads and look inward. “Are we cursing these places?,” we worried. Yet, even amidst the rubble, there are a couple we reviewed from back in the day still proudly standing: Camden Kitchen (which we also went back to recently, maybe more on that another time…), our major loves Las Tapas de Lola and little ‘ol Goose on the Loose. If we’re honest, we don’t know how to describe the feeling we have knowing GotL is still standing; the meeting point of surprise, shock, intrigue and elation. It’s the little cafe that could.
We stayed in one of those aforementioned big chain hotels last week, and instead of booking a sad hotel breakfast we jumped at the chance to time-travel back to our 21 year-old selves and drop in once again for breakfast at Goose on the Loose.
The interior has not changed one bit. Still the same ramshackle wooden tables and tired chairs, all shabby chic and eclectically trinketed. The noises are all the same. Radio Nova on the airwaves screeching you into the morning with soft rock, continuous clinks of ceramic coffee cups and the great growl of the coffee grinder gobbling up beans and spitting our grounds. The trampoline pop of the toaster like clockwork.
The smells are the same. The fry is the mainstay here, so the air bears the salty, sweet fatty heft of frying bacon and sizzling sausages but this is also a crêperie so the floury scent of milky batter is also prominent. Espresso’s fine fragrance also lingers (here they use Two Spots Coffee, a North Co Dublin roastery) but whereas we must have ordered coffees in the past when we ate here we now only have eyes for large piping hot pots of strong tea when in cafes like this. Sharing a pot and asking for a hot water top-up is part of the cosy conviviality, if you ask us.
It’s like someone’s front room-turned-cafe, there’s even an oddly-inviting armchair situation for a sole diner. Familiar in only the way greasy spoons (said here with love, never shade) can be. These types of hidden in plain view cafes are truly a certain breed, and they offer something unique that other places cannot as they are firmly in the “if you know, you know” category. Sure, GotL needed a bit of spruce and investment back in 2013 and, by God, it still needs it, but in a loveable ‘ol rogue type-of-way, it’s part of its charm. It’s like those “i’ll get around to that” projects around the house that never quite get done, even a decade later.
The menu lacks provenance, which is not a surprise, but never disappoints in flavour. The full Irish (with erroneous beans — we’ll forgive it) is piping hot, everything well-cooked (particularly the fried egg, the optimum runniness and crisp edges) and this has the mark of a place where flinging plates like this out is second nature. The bacon is crisp but never dry, that check-scrunching saltiness punctuated by mini pockets of sweet, rendered fat. The sausages feel pan-fried, soft and a little wobbly rather than crisp-skinned from being oven-blasted or deep-fried. We don’t have the patience to pan-fry sausages at home, so it’s a treat to eat while out.
We should order from the menu’s other regions, but we can’t help coming back to what appeals to memory the most. There’s something so comforting and familiar about places like these. Maybe one day we’ll splash out on a crêpe - we were tempted this time - but maybe we won’t. Perhaps we’ll just keep coming back dutifully for the same thing over and over, and each time it will transport us back to those first few months finding our feet as food writers.
In a Dublin that’s fast changing with even relatively recent remnants of its past resigned to dust and shaky memory, it’s heartwarming that even the most unassuming spots can survive and still deliver the same delicious experience a decade on. For as long as this place stays part of the fabric of Kevin Street and Dublin 8, it will only ever become more and more special to us.