The Two Minute Review: Honest to Goodness

Ronan Doyle
7 hours ago
2 min read

What’s the story with Honest to Goodness?

A smart social media presence and everything-in-house ethos had Liberties café Honest to Goodness on our hitlist long before their turkey meatball Christmas wrap leapfrogged the competition to land best-in-class in our seasonal sandwich rankings. With a revamped menu just launched, and another sopping day leaving us in dire need of a lift, it was time to dig deeper.

What should we order?

They really do make almost everything on-site, syrups and all – you won’t get another coffee like this around. Caramelised banana and cardamom both made for rich twists on single origin Bell Lane brews, and if summer ever comes, we’ll be back on the double to try these in iced latte form.

Side salads sum it up - we didn’t leave a grain of the subtly sweet, spiced couscous piled beside the chicken ranch sandwich (€10) behind. Too many cafés fling fistfuls of leaves to prettify plates, all inevitably left untouched. Here they can’t countenance waste, and the rich flavours won’t let you. That’s despite how filling this doorstopper works out, with proper pressed chicken thighs spilling juice over a slaw of lime and chilli.

If it’s a little less spicy than we’d like, the breakfast burrito (€14) makes up the gap, with pleasant pico de gallo heat pimped by chunks of jalapeno. It’s sizeable (as you’d hope for the price point), with no shortage of soft scramble competing with the buried treasure of crisp-edged hash browns for appreciative oohs and aahs.

The Friday special sloppy Joe (€10) packs plenty of heat too, tempered by decidedly unstingy slathers of mayo and a cheddar that could use just a little more character. Each sandwich is offered on your choice of five homemade focacce – the tomato with this would really kick it into high gear.

"Honest to Goodness" will do as a family-friendly version of the exclamation that escaped us on tasting the buffalo chicken meatballs (€14). Hot sauce-soaked breadcrumbs (made, ofc, from the previous day’s focaccia) are the secret to how they’ve coaxed minced breast to a texture more akin to a liver parfait, with seared crusts saving every drip of divine juice to be spilled out over the roast cauliflower and brown rice beneath. We needed a minute. If you were distraught to see the end of the seasonal special, you can rejoice - this is for life, not just for Christmas.

The perfectly pillowy cinnamon swirls (€4) and white chocolate cookies (€3.50) looked extra-inviting after all that coma-courting stuff. There’s novel nutty complexity in the cookie’s flour blend – nothing plain about it – but it’s the scroll’s soft glories we stepped back out into the showery day dreaming of. We’ll be back for a bite of the (sold out) blueberry one sharpish.

Why should we go?

As we gloomily glared out at yet another miserable afternoon of endless Irish rain, we thought about what a climate like this brings with it. Grief, sure, but great produce too, and for folks as talented as those here, the time to think through and test the best ways to use it. That's inspiration - when it rains it pours.