Food

Pancakes for lunch and cake for tea

Brunch is growing in popularity in Dublin, but the grande dame of afternoon tea is fighting back

Yeats Season afternoon tea at The Merrion Hotel coincides with the 150th anniversary of the poet’s birth and features three new creations from pastry chef Paul Kelly

Marie Claire Digby's face
Marie Claire Digby
Wed May 6 2015 - 18:07

As two more Dublin restaurants add their version of the American-inspired meal that is a hybrid of breakfast and lunch to their menus, is brunch the new afternoon tea, we wonder?

Ely Bar & Brasserie in Dublin 1 is to offer brunch from noon on Saturdays from May 16th. Pichet restaurant in Dublin 2 dipped its toes into the lucrative brunch trade three weeks ago and is serving it on Sundays, between 11am and 4pm. “One of the main reasons we have started brunch is to extend the Pichet experience to a wider audience,” says senior sous chef Grainne O’Keefe.

The Marker Hotel at Grand Canal Square has a more original take on weekend “out of hours” eating, with its Sunday afternoon Le Drunch menu, a late lunch, early dinner option, served between 2pm and 5pm.

But the grande dame of Dublin’s afternoon tea venues, The Merrion Hotel, is fighting back with its new WB Yeats Season afternoon tea, for which pastry chef Paul Kelly has created three new sweet treats. The Innisfree is a rhubarb and honey choux bun inspired by the writer’s poetry. The Spectacle is a milk chocolate and caramel cremeux with lemon cream, which pays homage to Yeats’ trademark spectacles. The Mystic is a vanilla and strawberry bavarois that plays on the writer’s interest in astrology. The Yeats Season afternoon tea (€38) will be served for the month of June.