I am making a serious habit of sampling Baggot Street's selection of gut-fillers when walking into the city from work. This usually occurs when I have foolishly forgotten to bring lunch on my half-day Friday and painful growls are preventing me from functioning as a human on my walk into town, unable to wait another 20 minutes for a wider eatery selection. Or I am on my way to a nearby watering hole and need to line my stomach to make it un-combustable. Borlottie was the former, as it happens. I entered this industrial sort of corridor and walked to the server. The menu was the most confusing thing I've ever seen, changing the list of meat & cheese options to "Proteins" with calorie counts in big bold text dominating the whole thing. I had to have it explained to me a few times by the patient man at the counter. It consisted of salads, wraps and broths, essentially, tinged with Asian flavours. They are, of course, aimed at the health conscious, which is quite a bold move for an actual takeaway lunch option in a large office area, but it errs on the right side of clinical. I breathed a sigh of relief when my chicken hot box arrived - sparse it certainly wasn't. Strange prison connotations aside (polystyrene containers, is this for the overall style or are ye just not arsed cleaning up?) this was a serious tasty feast. The quinoa I swapped the rice for was beautifully cooked, the chicken not too dry and the red cabbage slaw a perfect crunchy addition. I added extra avocado which was excellent. Too much carrot in proportion to the rest, but sure I horsed it all down anyway. My aforementioned growly metabolism that usually demands to be fed small amounts at regular intervals also knows when to stop. But this time the demand was bottomless.
Apart from the music being too loud (and frankly too corny) and the cool industrial hanging lights next to some unintentional actual holes in the wall that just need fixing, this was a lovely spot. I'll be back for some more gobbling, but I will not ever join the wretched calorie counters' club. State of yiz. read more