My Lunches With Elvis #12: Brunels

One happy chomper…

ere’s us thinking that we’d run out of cafés and restaurants in Greystones within a month or two, but, hey, when there’s a new one opening every week or two, time just keeps on slippin’…

This week, Elvis Alan Adamson and GG decided to check out the cheeky combination of café and wine bar that is Brunels.

Named after the engineering wiz Isambard Kingdom Brunel – who brought the choo-choos to Greystones back in 1855 – once inside this cute little corner café, the man himself looms large on a full-size wall mural featuring many other icons associated with the town. Included are, of course, old dogs Ronnie Drew and Brendan Behan, alongside summer lodger Gene Wilder, newbie Saoirse Ronan, golf god Paul Dunne, and yer man Hozier, to name but six. Surprised not to see WB Yeats, or Beckett, , or Johnny McEvoy. And what about Ormonde fan Michael Jackson, or proud protestors Ted & Dougal…?

But we weren’t here to gasp in awe of the rich and the famous who had graced our town. Hunger was upon us, and we quickly settled on a very tempting Roast Rare Beef, Gubbeen Cheese & Horseradish Sauce sandwich, Elvis opting also for a cappuccino (“I’ll be having a few pints later, and this will caffeine me up“) and GG for the sweet potato soup.

Within about three and a half minutes, the lot was gone, leaving Elvis using his finger to fish out the fallen foam from around the inside of his coffee cup.

How much did The King like Brunels? Well, having recently abandoned the simple markings out of ten that began with our café crawl back in September, in his joy today, Elvis jumped straight to the billions. The billion billions, at that…