Come Here To Me!

I’m somewhat new to the Tweet Machine. With about 300 tweets, most of them re-tweets of people funnier/cleverer/cooler than me, I’m hardly setting the thing alight either. One of the first things I did upon joining the ‘Bourgeois Facebook’ however was get right on to Crackbird to avail of their ‘tweetseats’, essentially FREE FOOD on offer to Twitter followers.

Any day I’m working, providing tours of Dublin to tourists, I tend to come up Crane Lane. It’s a good shortcut from Temple Bar to Dublin Castle, with some interesting history to it too. The smell from Crackbird has been tempting me for the last few weeks, and any glance inside the place has always revealed it to be packed.

I was lucky enough to grab two ‘tweetseats’ for Tuesday evening, no small feat when you see the crowds inside this place. The brother was unable to attend due to having a busier life than me, but Ci from this here parish was available to fill in thankfully. You’d be surprised how easy it is to find people to eat for free with you.

Crackbird is a ‘pop-up restaurant’, which means she ain’t gonna last forever, as the title of this piece suggests. Come the end of May in fact, Crackbird will be no more. This is most unfortunate when you remember the last few ventures in this premises seemed almost allergic to customers.

The menu here is simple. Chicken, chicken and more chicken. Man can do so much with chicken of course, and between the two of us we opt for the “Skillet fried buttermilk chicken” and the “Super crisp soy garlic chicken”. The chicken arrives quickly after, literally in buckets, and we tuck in.

We both opted for a bottle of David Llewellyn cider, which is about as cidery as cider comes. Being a very strict stout drinker, and not knowing anything about cider beyond the fact Bulmers is pretty nice in the summer, I’m taken aback by this very different taste. I’m unsurprised to notice online that the cider is a national award winner. Pilsner is the only beer on offer, but it’s a nice one at that and we opt for two bottles after the cider.

The “tweetseats” consist of one table of six, and being a party of two we find ourselves sitting next to four random punters. We’re tucking into this like barbarians in the wild, but we don’t care. Looking around the restaurant, I notice this sort of communal eating is very much a part of the venture. All you can hear is conservation and the Pilsner flows freely. The music is great, indeed the best playlist I’ve stumbled across in a Dublin restaurant to date, and the staff are incredibly friendly. Despite the fact we’re eating for free, beyond our drinks, there is no effort at all to hurry us a long. We’re given a nice sending off too at the end.

With our bellies full, we went for a walk around the city, feeling eight months pregnant. The journey would take us to the ‘snail bar’ (I’d never been and fancied walking as far away and possible) and on to the more familiar Brogans. If you like chicken at all, get into Crackbird before she vanishes, and this Crane Lane premises goes quiet once more.

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