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Synge & Byrne

4.0 (1 review)

Synge & Byrne Cafes Restaurant Photos

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1406
6822

3 years ago

Helpful 4
Thanks 1
Love this 5
Oh no 1

The Church Cafe & Bistro

The Church Cafe & Bistro

4.0(3 reviews)
0.4 mi
££

I looked forward to trying this cafe/bistro, but I was really disappointed. I left regretting that…read moreI went there. We were absolutely ripped off and misled here. I'm not sure which is worse but neither is acceptable and we certainly won't return. First the food. I ordered the scampi from the lunch menu. This came with salad & chips. It is priced high end at £14. I thought for 14 quid I'd be served quality scampi in a light or even tempura batter, after all it's a bistro. Scampi includes various culinary preparations of certain cold water crustaceans, commonly the Norway lobster, also known as langoustine or Dublin Bay prawns. I mean we were within a 5 minute walk of the sea here, we are surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and just half an hour from the harbours of Kilkeel & Annalong. Proper scampi by the ton is right on our doorstep with very few food miles involved. No. This dish contained 7 pre frozen warm water Pacific king prawns in a heavy, greasy batter. These prawns aren't scampi by any stretch of the imagination. Any chef worth his salt will know this. I could go to a local supermarket and buy a bag of frozen Whitby scampi for £2. I'd certainly get a dozen or so and 39% of the Whitby product is scampi. These warm water prawns do not come close to the sweet taste of scampi either. They are usually intensively farmed in Thailand. The sort of warm water prawn you usually get 10 or more of from a Chinese takeaway, with rice or chips, for around £6 and the Chinese price includes curry, salt & chilli or sweet and sour sauce. I tore off most of the excessive greasy batter. No thanks folks this is grim greasy-spoon fare. The chips were alright but I couldn't rate them as very good either. I ate most of the chips because I was hungry. The fact is that £8 would be a realistic price for this meal. The fact is that had I known I would be served warm water prawns I'd have taken soup. Had I eaten the quantity of greasy batter I'd certainly have been bloated. The tartare sauce isn't home made either unless you define out of a jar as such. I don't. Any chef worth his salt likely wouldn't either. My wife had a chicken club type sandwich with salad & chips at £9. Again easily overpriced by £2. She said there was a good portion of chicken; and she left half of her chips. It's this that raises this review to 2 star albeit reluctantly. Second the service. Terrible. We were there over an hour and 10 minutes. It was a full 30 minutes from we placed our order to the time the food was put before us. Let's put this into context here it was fish & chips and a sandwich with chips folks. We ordered two coffees. We said that the coffees could be held until we were well through our meal. The waitress forgot my coffee order. She asked twice more and when we did tell her we were ready for our coffees she went off and didn't return with coffee rather we sat and watched her as she instead began taking credit card payments from customers who wanted to leave. We wanted to leave at this point too. Anyway she eventually returned from the bar area which was littered with dirty dishes (we sat with our dirty dishes for over 10 minutes) to take our coffee order for at least the third time. We had enough and just wanted to leave. We regretted going there. I wanted to tell the waitress exactly how awful the food and service was but the place was full of customers so I decided to be kind and stay silent, cancel the coffee order, hand over £23 and get out the door soonest. We got our coffees and ice cream in Maud's at the other end of town. I noticed they serve the tiny bottles of Coca Cola. About 200ml so the customer is being ripped off here too. Their free wifi kept crashing too. A SABENA visit - such a bloody experience, never again.

We we're in a group of 8 and were quickly seated. I had the Sirloin Pot Roast, it was worth 5 stars…read morealone. All 8 of our guests really liked their dishes. Friendly service. We'll be back!

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The Church Cafe & Bistro - The greasy grim batter. No thanks.

The greasy grim batter. No thanks.

The Church Cafe & Bistro
The Church Cafe & Bistro - Part of the lunch menu. Apparently it's a bistro in the evening

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Part of the lunch menu. Apparently it's a bistro in the evening

Strandfield House - Plum pistachio cake and coffee. Fancy china!

Strandfield House

4.7(15 reviews)
9.1 mi
€€

Came here after hearing great great things from family in the area. We had the shakshuka and…read morecoffee. It was just amazing. And then we had desserts which was just out of this world. Stranfield we will be back

Vegetarian café with great food and ambiance (4.5/5 Green Stars)…read more We stopped here en route to Carlingford on a friend's recommendation and all three of us were very happy we did. The place is lovely - the café is filled with light and plants and the surroundings are beautiful. Mum is a picky eater but she relished the mushroom quiche and finished the entire piece even though it was huge! (Seriously - about three times the size of portions elsewhere.) My brother loved his herbed rice bowl and I liked the organic porridge with fruit and the pistachio plum cake. The only kink was that several items arrived much later than the food - the coffees, bread, and honey for my porridge (I had already finished my porridge by then). The store is filled with great stuff - fresh fruit and veg, and a good selection of some of the most ethical products. Weirdly, the Strandfield website contains no info other than an address, so you have to rely on reviews to get info in advance. The lunch menu is mostly comprised of sourdough pizza, salads (including a quinoa bowl and herbed rice bowl), and sandwiches - see menu photo. There are also lots of bakery items, including freshly baked scones, cakes and wheaten bread (which was really good - I bought one to take home). I'm giving Strandfield café 4.5 out of 5 Green Stars for social and environmental impact, for these reasons: · I didn't actually notice at the time but the menu is 100% vegetarian! · Strandfield uses free range eggs from their own farm. · My porridge was made with organic oats · Flowers and plants in the café come from Stranfield's own nursery · The grocer sources local and organic fruits and vegetables along free range eggs, and organic health foods · The store stocks a really good selection of ethical goods - I could do most of my shopping here if I lived here. · Strandfield would benefit from providing more info (on the website or menu) on ingredient sourcing.

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Strandfield House
Strandfield House - Organic porridge with fruit.

Organic porridge with fruit.

Strandfield House - Items from the excellent Strandfield store, next to the cafe

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Items from the excellent Strandfield store, next to the cafe

Liberty Cafe

Liberty Cafe

4.3(3 reviews)
4.0 mi

During the couple of days I spent in Carlingford I noticed Liberty Cafe directly opposite our…read moreaccommodation and loved how it looked. It's a quirky cafe with flower painted walls and wooden tables outside, so you can sit with a coffee and watch the happenings on Thosel Street. I visited early on Sunday morning, 13/08/2017, and it was wonderful as the cafe and street were nearly empty - most of bustling Carlingford seemed to still be in bed. Within an hour everywhere was bustling again, so it was lovely to enjoy the initial peace and quiet. Two friends and I took a table outside in the cool morning sun and ordered three veggie breakfasts and coffees. My veggie omelette, filled with tomatoes, spinach, mushrooms and cheese, and served with toast, was pretty good. The others ordered brown and soda breads with poached eggs. Everyone enjoyed their food. Service was a little slow and there was a slight mix up in our orders - I was initially served brown bread not the white toast I'd asked for and my friend the opposite - but we swapped our bread so all was fine. All in all, an enjoyable experience and next time I'm in Carlingford I will return to try some of the delicious looking cakes they sell.

Located down a gorgeous pedestrian street strung with fairy lights along lanterned street posts,…read morethe ambiance of Liberty Cafe fits in beautifully with this street. I informed the staff about my dietary requirements straight away and they told me the options available to me. I got the carrot and coconut soup for lunch and it was absolutely gorgeous, vegan and gluten free. One of my dining partners had the quiche with smoked salmon, courgette and cream cheese, and the other had a cappuccino and a scone, both of which said their food was absolutely delicious. The staff are really sweet and overall extremely accommodating and I would absolutely recommend coming here, and will certainly be returning next time I'm in Carlingford.

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Liberty Cafe - Americano Coffee

Americano Coffee

Liberty Cafe - Vegan carrot and coconut soup

Vegan carrot and coconut soup

Liberty Cafe - Pancakes

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Pancakes

The Velveteen Rabbit Cafe - Apple tart portion

The Velveteen Rabbit Cafe

5.0(1 review)
8.0 mi

It was snowing heavily outside. It was drifting too and just 1 centigrade with a south westerly…read moregale blowing. So we settled in, warm, and thought we weren't going outside but it took only one photograph - chocolate covered strawberries. Our son had seen them on the Velveteen Facebook and had ordered them up for his Valentine with an afternoon tea box. Ooh it was a Homer S moment. Must have....must have. I thought I was back in the carribean with Norwegian Cruises and cruise director Nelson was looking after us again. Oh well we are such stuff as dreams are made. Anyway that did it. On went the layers and headgear and gloves. Out into the wild snowscape, feet scrunching and sinking down into the soft snow. By the time I got to the delightful V Rabbit they'd sold out of the choccy strawberries, damn and blast nevertheless we got a £10 treat box with all sorts of sweet treats, cakes, tarts and scones and we got cappuccino £2.5. Everything in here is home-made and proper made. Not at all like the cakes from the industrial bakeries we have along Hill Street but how you would make it at home. The photos show the goodie box and separately a small lemon drizzle cake and a piece of Victoria sponge. The lemon drizzle was perfect. The Victoria sponge picture is half the portion as we split it between two. These are really scrummy cakes and I remember that taste from years ago. Victoria sponge made properly, in particular, has a distinctive unique taste and texture. I'm glad I went. I sure wasn't disappointed. I would have liked the chocolate covered strawberries but hey ho some other time.

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The Velveteen Rabbit Cafe - Victoria sponge

Victoria sponge

The Velveteen Rabbit Cafe - Inside

Inside

The Velveteen Rabbit Cafe - Full breakfast

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Full breakfast

Toasted

Toasted

5.0(2 reviews)
31.6 mi

Well, Toasted turned out to be quite the little treat! With about a half hour to kill between the…read morepoint we had to drop our daughter off for school and then be back in time to see her play, we didn't have too many options, and as a result called in here. I've seen the sign out on the main road (which would be easy to miss) every day as it's on my commute to work and yet I've never been in. So this worked out well. What a great hidden gem, loved this place. If you're looking for it, it is opposite the attendant-less Maxol garage, down the side of the used car place. The décor has all the hallmarks of a trendy contemporary coffee shop/deli, nothing too original, but to their credit they have distilled the design to the best elements of it and then executed the layout very well, so it's a nice place to be. The staff were great too which I love as there is little to endear a place to me more quickly than nice people working there who are nice, not through customer training but because they are just good folks!! The food when was great, a wide range of mouth-watering choices are clearly displayed across the huge menu..... which is the entire back wall of the place. It has been painted in blackboard paint and the menu chalked up in big clear writing. The prices although on the higher end of average aren't extortionate by any means so I wouldn't call it cheap eats but you get top quality food and service for just north of average price. The coffee was great, which is an essential element for me and the last thing I ate was a scone..... as we were there so early, it was freshly backed and still warm from the oven......................... so so good!

Nice little find 5 mins from our vacation home. amazing baked goods, solid breakfast and proper…read morecoffee.

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Toasted
Toasted - Oh! Nice. Tastes even better than it looks

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Oh! Nice. Tastes even better than it looks

Synge & Byrne - cafes - Updated May 2026

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