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Compared to D6, D4 and Big Town, SoCoDu (South County Dublin) seems relatively starved of pretty, healthy cafes dedicated to serving breakfast bowls and avocado toast so Fable + Stey is very welcome, indeed. Brought to you by the energetic team behind Little Frieda’s, another gem of a place nestled (incredibly) behind Lidl in Deansgrange, everything about this newest venue is sunshine and light.
When we first visited, the actual sun poured into the all-glass frontage of F + S (Newtown Park never looked so Scandi), so maybe that helped but so did the mood of the staff, the gorgeous decor and the food itself. Admittedly, we’re a sucker for anywhere with thistles in milk bottles and gleaming white marble counters.
The menu is very small, but variety comes from how you customise it, adding and subtracting proteins and extras to suit your whims. There’s also a daily special soup, which comes with tangy sourdough toast. Ours was a silky curried cauliflower sporting an artistic spiral of chilli oil and a lashing of fresh coriander leaves. Absolute perfection.
That would have been enough for most lunches but we wanted to try everything so we also gave every other savoury lunch option a go, save the Gubbeen toasties. The chargrilled broccoli salad was dressed beautifully with Insta-ready, edible nasturtium flowers and a citrusy house vinaigrette that was applied with a light hand but still infused the tender stems with zing. Avocado toast was heaped high with properly ripe fruit, which is not always a given, and had a tasty sprinkling of toasted seeds. In retrospect, we probably should have shared one or the other but neither of us have any regrets about the piggery. Why would you when everything tastes so good?
All day breakfast looks just as compelling- overnight oats with rhubarb; homemade peanut butter and jam on sourdough; scramblers on brioche. Needless to say, we’ll be back very, very soon to test drive that, too.
F + S would sit just as comfortably in Notting Hill or Vesterbro, so we’re lucky to have it in Blackrock, just within shouting distance of IMAGE HQ. Grab a seat before the queues start…