Warehouse Food Market & Café review: ‘We experience buyer’s remorse in not opting for the three-cheese toastie’

Our food critic can’t stay away from a warehouse wonderland of gastronomic treats in Dublin

Warehouse Food Market & Café in Harold's Cross, Dublin. Picture: Owen Breslin

Katy McGuinness

July 21 2022 11:30 AM

The pandemic changed the way many of us shop for food. One of the positives has been the resurgence of the neighbourhood grocer. In Dublin, the Arnold siblings’ Lennox Street Grocer in Portobello is now firmly established at the heart of its community, as is Marlowe & Co a little further west in The Tenters. Similar independent shops have popped up throughout Dublin and in towns all over Ireland, offering a shopping experience responsive to local needs. I hope they continue to thrive as they make running out to pick up something for dinner a joy rather than a chore.

At the start of 2020, Chris Chapman established weekl.ie, a delivery service designed to take the hassle out of grocery shopping for consumers who wanted to buy high-quality food products but didn’t have the time to trek around from butcher to grocer to fishmonger to cheese shop picking up an item here and an item there. Covid saw the demand for the service increase exponentially, and he needed to find a bigger premises. Eventually, he located a warehouse in Harold’s Cross that was large enough to be a retail shop as well and, because there was plenty of space, he put in a proper kitchen at one end. Now it’s a café, an event space, and a shop, and you can hire it out for private dinners if you ask nicely.

I first visited a few months back when I happened upon the warehouse while I was visiting an artist in the nearby Mart Gallery & Studios and we came in to get (very good, Cloud Picker) coffee. I left with a haul of good stuff: a Ring’s chicken, cheese and olive oil from Lilliput Stores, a huge bag of black peppercorns, the biggest jar of anchovies I’d ever seen, a few tins of those addictive Perello olives — gordal olives tinned in brine with guindilla chilli for a bit of heat — and a stash of Assassination Custard’s excellent piccalilli.

Last week, I went back once for lunch, another time to pick up some cakes as a treat, and a third time for a picnic to eat in the car on the way to the west. I haven’t yet been for house-made gnocchi, weekend brunch (the French toast is Insta famous), or the Sunday lunch special, but I imagine it’s only a matter of time.

For lunch on Tuesday, a friend and I share a few of the lunch dishes, starting with a trio of hummus — lemon, carrot and beetroot — with crisp chimichurri flatbreads. The hummus is pretty to look at, served with roasted nuts and scattered herbs, and the flavours are good; it would make a fine solo lunch for €8.

Chef Felipe Zytkiewies dresses the roast vegetables — tomato, courgette and red pepper — in a toasted sandwich on rye sourdough (€7.50) with a chimichurri tahini salsa, which is pretty tasty, although we experience a certain amount of buyer’s remorse in not opting for the less-wholesome-sounding three-cheese toastie or the one filled with marinated chicken thighs with chorizo Kewpie mayo.

Our third dish is a quinoa-based salad bowl (€8.50) that manages to be both virtuous and enjoyable, the grain topped with roast butternut squash and broccoli, avocado, pickled red onions and a good dollop of hummus.

On Thursday, I’m back for lemon drizzle cake and banana bread (€3 each) — which are ‘fine but unexciting’ according to my in-house expert. I find both on the dry side. But I also nab the most delicious Wicklow raspberries (the best I’ve had all summer) at €8 for a huge punnet, beautiful Amalfi lemons, super-fresh salad leaves from Patch Farm and a tin of octopus in smoked paprika sauce (granted, that’s a niche buy, but a very delicious one). I resist the Quillo Spanish crisps, although I admit I’m curious about the fried-egg flavour. I bump into a friend who works nearby and tells me she shops here everyday.

I’m too late for the sausage rolls made with free-range pork from Pigs on the Green. So, on Friday, we swing by for some of those (€5). It’s a close call between the pork and leek and the chorizo versions, both are very good. The pastry is nicely flaky, the chutney properly piquant, the leaves well-dressed. A BLT of crisp McCarthy’s bacon (€7.50) is a bit of a disaster in terms of drippiness (that Dijon mayo is very loose) but tastes wonderful.

Next month, the lovely people behind the Bahay Filipino food business will pop up here (keep an eye on their social media for ticket information) and I expect Sunday lunches will become a bit of a thing as we head into the autumn. In the meantime, swing by for breakfast, for lunch, for McLoughlin’s steaks for dinner, for milk and bread, for breakfast, for whatever you’re having yourself.

Budget
Overnight oats for breakfast will set you back €5.

Blowout
The Sunday chef’s specials vary from week to week, but a recent chicken tempura burger was €14.

The rating
8/10 food
9/10 ambience
9/10 value
26/30

Warehouse Food Market & Café, Greenmount Avenue, Harold’s Cross, Dublin 6, warehousefoodmarket.ie

Warehouse Food Market & Café review: ‘We experience buyer’s remorse in not opting for the three-cheese toastie’

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