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Staple Foods is a new(ish) casual dining restaurant, sharing its space with Crowbar and the Button Factory in Temple Bar. Offering up healthy food ranging from beetroot juices to coleslaw without the mayo, they have meat, vegetarian and vegan meals available. My favourite vegetarian and I got there at 5pm, hoping to sample their dinner menu. The décor is a mismatch of dark wood furniture and leather armchairs, with the main feature of the restaurant being the well-stocked bar. It turned out that the dinner menu was offered for a few weeks but it interfered with the bar. It was a shame they had not answered the phone or responded on Twitter, as had we known dinner was in fact no longer on offer, we would have gone earlier for lunch and presumably experienced more of an atmosphere.
We placed the last orders from the lunch menu; my partner had a quinoa salad, while I had falafel with coleslaw, both priced at a €7.50. I also had a carrot juice (€5), intrigued by the juice cleanses on offer. The juice was presumably nutritious, but tasted solely and strongly of lime. The food arrived quickly, was brightly coloured and looked very fresh. My partner’s quinoa salad consisted of beetroot, chick peas and peppers on a bed of baby salad leaves. As often happens with vegetarian food, we could not identify all the different components of the salad, but she enjoyed the massive portion nonetheless. My meal consisted of three turmeric yellow falafel balls on a bed of shredded root vegetables and salad leaves, topped with a dollop of hummus. The hummus was delicious, but I found the rest of the meal had just one very fragrant taste that we were both unable to identify, perhaps it was celeriac. Whatever it was, I could not finish the meal and was left surprisingly disappointed. The prioritizing of the bar over dinner offerings — strange for health conscious foodies — along with the confusion over this information and the hit and miss quality of the food, left me wondering what all the fuss is about, but I would be happy to be proved wrong.
