Archive for February 13th, 2007
Gourmet Burger gone already! Bugger.
Posted on February 13, 2007, by Conor O'Neill, under Food, Ireland, Restaurants.
Ah crap. JD posted a comment here earlier letting me know that he went to Gourmet Burger in Portlaoise the other day and they have already closed down to concentrate on their Dublin business. I’m so pissed off about this. I don’t think it is lack of market in this case, but lack of marketing. How many thousand cars go up and down the N7 and N8 every day? I never once saw an ad for them. I did see some attempt at putting a truck trailer on the side of the road at Christmas with ads for the overall Food Court but that’s it. People do need to know you exist before they’ll try your business.
Anthony from Ummera mentioned to them that I had blogged about them. Not once did they contact me or post a comment on this blog telling us what they were trying to do and how they’d love it if people would tell their friends. For gods sake, it would’ve been free advertising. Arrggggggh. Clueless Train Manifesto.
Surely someone with a bit more marketing nous and budget can make a go of such a great idea in an ideal location?
UPDATE 1: David from Gourmet Burger has posted an excellent comment here explaining exactly why they shut down Port Laoise. It makes total sense.
Now I’m between a rock and a hardplace aka Iarnród Eireann Sambos or O’Brien’s Sambos. Where’s me tupperware?
29 Comments
My kinda deli
Posted on February 13, 2007, by Conor O'Neill, under Bandon.
A treasure trove of proper Italian food at great prices
The Boot’s Specialities
I heard about this deli over three years ago and have been meaning to go since. The story was that they had great Italian food but at non-ripoff prices since they are also a wholesalers.
Brendan mentioned it recently as a comment on this blog and we agreed to meet up last Saturday morning. He arrived with his Sardinian wife Laetitia and their two daughters. I arrived with numbers 2, 3 and 4.
However, we got there first and I decided it had shut down since there was no sign of a deli. The others arrived shortly after and drove over to this utterly non-descript industrial unit and there it was “The Boot’s Specialities”. I had seen the sign but assumed they were shoe distributors.
Unfortunately they also looked shut. Brendan rang Pasquale the onwer and it turned out he was inside prepping. He let us in with a big welcome a few minutes later.
Inside was a bunch of shelves with all sorts of pasta, sweets, drinks, sauces, wines, flour and ingredients. He had laid out some lovely cheese, olives, salami and mortadella to taste. My monsters started acting up so he broke out some bikkies too.
Laetitia and Brendan showed me all of the things they liked and I grabbed bits of everything. Some parma, salted capers, soup pasta, the Italian version of Monster Munch, olives, olive oil, coffee, those breakfast biscuits, the works.
I think we were the only people speaking English there and he was very busy. Not too busy tho to shock me by handing me an espresso he made himself using one of those stove top little pots. I think I love this man.
The reason I absolutely adored this deli was because it was the real stuff that real Italians eat. He didn’t have 16 different single estate extra virgin olive oils, he had one. He also didn’t have vintage red wine vinegar, just good normal stuff. Even more impressive was that many of the prices were far lower than you’d pay in Tesco!
I had a conversation with Haydn recently about the modern midle-class food fetishization that goes on. It seems sometimes like all those frou-frou shops are there to massage our gourmand egos rather than provide great food at good prices. I see Pasquale as the antidote to that.
He didn’t even mind when Oisín told him he talked funny 
And those Monster Munch (Cipster) went down a storm with the kids.
I’ll be back very very soon without the fighting children to check out the fridge section. I’ll still need my advisors tho.
11 Comments
