(In terms of food history, we’ve previously looked at the city’s oldest restaurants, the first Chinese restaurants, the first Italian restaurants, the first pizzerias and the first Indian restaurants)
This is part two of our series looking at the history of Vegetarianism in Dublin, primarily focusing on restaurants and cafes. Part One began in the 1860s and finished up in the early 1920s.
We pick up the story in the 1930s…
Frank Wyatt, editor of Vegetarian News and Secretary of the London Vegetarian Society, gave a talk in January 1933 on Vegetarianism in the Mansion House. The Irish Times (17 Jan) noted that the meeting was mostly made up of women. Wyatt, a vegetarian of twenty years standing, told the room that he was ‘satisfied that he was a healthier man than any flesh eater’.
The Irish Press, 5 March 1947
Moira Henry as one of the delegates at the 11th IVU World Vegetarian Congress 1947. Stonehouse, England. Credit – http://www.ivu.org
Moira Henry passed away in 1997. The Irish Times, 10 March 1997.
Patrick Campbell (aka Quidnunc) interviewed Florence H. Gourlay, honorary treasurer of the Dublin Vegetarian Society for An Irishman’s Diary on 5 March 1951. Gourlay admitted that the organisation only had 33 members (an increase of 1 since 1949!) but she knew of 104 vegetarians altogether in the Republic. It was noted that while Belfast had a vegetarian restaurant, Dublin did not.
while Dublin had no purely vegetarian restaurant, hotels and restaurants generally were becoming more sympathetic towards their needs and could usually provide vegetarian meals if notice was given beforehand. Most of the members agree that a specialist restaurant would be a step forward but this would take time as well as a ‘lot of hard work and some capital’.
All changed the following year with the arrival of Good Karma at 4 Great Strand Street. As far as I can work out, this was the first purely vegetarian restaurant in the city since the College Vegetarian Restaurant closed its doors in 1922. It was opened by Jas Adams, Peter Lawson and Robert and Aaron Bartlett.
Site of Good Karma. 4 Great Strand Street as it looks today. Credit – infomatique
long room with wooden pillers and a cosily dim glow from candles and firelight. The table (made by the owners) are high if you like sitting up to your food: low if you prefer to loll across the tie-dyed cushions also made by the owners … Taj Mahal, Doctor Pepper and Crosby, Stills and Nash provided lush sounds in the background … it makes a wholesome change from the stagnancy of Dublin eating.
John S Doyle writing in the Irish Independent in 2005 remembered Good Karma as a:
A ‘head’ restaurant not everyone knew about, with bare brick walls and no seats, only bean bags, and mellow ‘sounds’. Nice food, none of your macrobiotic stuff. The ‘staff’ were laidback types who said “all right man”, and you were to take it as a privilege to be served by them. This was 1974 (sic) or so. There were numerous Garda raids, and the restaurant didn’t last long.
…Dublin’s first macrobiotic restaurant back in the early seventies and it was filled with, run by and staffed with hippies …What made it a nice place, perhaps more than the food, was the amateur attitude of everyone involved. You never felt that it was a commercial enterprise. Sure, money changed hands, but somehow you felt you were part of a social and gastronomic experiment.
It’s pretty amazing that there are so many positive memories of a place that was open for little more than twelve months.
While the restaurant closed, the health food shop, Green Acres, in the basement remained open. Patrick Comerford in The Irish Times (39 July 1975) interviewed the owner, Philip Guiney. He told Comeford that ‘not all the staff, and only a quarter of (his) customers’ were vegetarian. Open for three years, an increasing number of older people were visiting the ship realising that it was ‘not just a place for young freaks’. These older people came to ‘supplement their diets with natural foods, and probably a small number had become vegetarian out of economic necessary‘.
The journalist also mentioned the Ormond Health Centre (run by a Mr. Evans) on Parliament Street which sold dandelion coffee, Honeyrose cigarettes and herbal tea and the Irish Health and Herbal Centre on Trinity Street (run by Ann Flood and Michael McDonald) which was ‘not vegetarian orientated by any means’ but sold a lot of products popular with the vegetarian community.
In the late 1970s, there were a number of whole-food restaurants in Dublin including Munchies at 60 Bolton Street, The Golden Dawn on Crow Street and the Supernatural Tearooms at 53 Harcourt Street.
Here is a short piece on Munchies from 1977:
The Irish Times, 6 December 1977
The Golden Dawn, established in 1976, was described by Christy Stapleton of the Vegetarian Society of Ireland in the late 1990s as ‘the closest thing to a vegetarian restaurant in Dublin’ at the time. Ran by showband singer Joe Fitzmaurice and his wife, it used to be a favourite of actors Gabriel Byrne, Vinny McCabe and Garrett Keogh while DJ Paul Webb worked there as an assistant cook and Golden Horde frontman Simon Carmody as dishwasher. Here is a link to a great 1978 RTE piece on the restaurant.
Screengrab from 1978 RTE piece on The Golden Dawn restaurant.
A vegetarian restaurant called The Harvest was operating in 1979 on the top of Harcourt Street and then at 1 Lincoln Place by early 1983. I assume they were connected. An Irish Times journalist visited the the Harcourt Street Harvest restaurant and wrote in the paper on 14 December 1979 that she enjoyed her meal of:
Chickpea pea (50p) .. a tasty and sustaining … starter. For main course there’s a wide choice but the aduki bean hamburger with rice, salad and a choice of sauce (£1.80) is something to linger over
Bananas, a self-service vegetarian restaurant, was opened at 15 Upper Stephens St by Muriel Goodwin and friends in late 1982. Lorraine Kennedy reviewed it for The Irish Times on 15 October 1983. She said she was more than happy with her ‘starter of celery soup sprinkled with watercres .. for 85p … (and) a vegetable pizza (£1.20) accompanied by a mixed salad of orange, celery and more watercress’.
Also in 1982, Blazing Salads was established as a wholefood restaurant by the pioneering Fitzmaurice family after they decided to wind down The Golden Dawn. Based at the top floor of the Powerscourt Townhouse Centre until 2001, the family moved operations to a new deli-style premises on Drury Street where it is still open today.
The Well Fed Cafe was opened in 1983 at 6 Crow Street as part of the Dublin Resource Centre (DRC) and lasted until the at least mid 1990s. A Workers Co-Operative, it served delicious veggie food at a very cheap cost and won numerous award.
Around 1984, a veggie restaurant and wine bar called Rays opened in the premises of the former Golden Dawn in Crow Street.
Cornucopia Wholefood and Vegetarian Restaurant, the granddaddy of Dublin veggie restaurants, began trading on Wicklow Street in January 1986 and has been there ever since. It was established by Neil McCafferty (1952-1993) and Deirdre McCafferty, who is still the proprietor of the restaurant.
Some early shots of Cornucopia. Credit – cornucopia.ie
In the late 1980s, the Hare Krishnas opened a Veggie restaurant on Crow Street (where Tasty Zoes is now). It lasted for about a year. In 1998, they opened their first Govinda’s restaurant at 4 Aungier Street. That’s still open and they’ve a further two in the city, one on Middle Abbey Street and one on Merrion Row.
In 1987, a ‘demi-veg’ restaurant called It’s Natural opened up beside the Olympia Theatre on Dame Street. Also that year, a vegetarian restaurant called Second Nature opened its doors in Blackrock by sisters Fiona and Susan Bergin.
Piece on Vegetarianism.The Irish Press, 22 April 1988
Cranks, a UK vegetarian restaurant franchise, opened on the first floor of Bewley’s on Westmoreland Street in 1989. I’m not sure how long it lasted.
Opened in early 1996, Juice on South Great George’s Street was Dublin’s only sit-down vegetarian restaurant for many years. Open until midnight, it was a popular place until its closure in 2011
I’ll leave it that. It would take too much work trying to trace the various veggie restaurants that have come and gone in the city since the mid 1990s.
Appendix 1:
It seems there have been three different incarnations of Vegetarian Societies in Dublin:
Dublin Vegetarian Society, 1880s – mid 1910s
Dublin Vegetarian Society, 1946 – early 1960s
Vegetarian Society of Ireland, 1978 – Present
Click on the book for more.
Click on the book for more.
Come Here To Me! 
I remember Moira Henry from the early 80s. She seemed quite old then as I was only 20. She must have lived to a great age. She had a sister who looked nothing like her who was a vegetarian as well. Moira certainly stood out with her own unique style. I wanted to paint her but never got round to it. I still regret that. She said when she was younger that everyone in Dublin wore black, grey, navy or brown clothes and that with her bright colours she was constantly being pointed at in the street. She was a sensitive soul. The world would be a much worse place without those who refuse to conform. RIP Moira
Fantastic comment PM.
I wonder when she was born. If she became veggie in 1934 and died in 1997, she must have been a right old age.
Thanks Lads, that was excellent..You used an image of the sign that hung outside ‘The Golden Dawn’ in Temple bar …but did you know that the sign was painted by the Dublin artist Brendan Forman and was made from the lid of a coffin. Keep up the good work. M
The Hare Krishna restaurant in Temple Bar was called ‘The Golden Avatar’, hilariously and quickly changed by us Dubliners to…’The Golden Abbatoir’ because of it’s vegetarianism.
[…] on the blog Sam has looked at the history of vegetarianism in Dublin. In a 1975 Irish Times article entitled ‘The Whole Vegetarian Thing’, Patrick […]
[…] Muriel Goodwin and friends in late 1982. (More on the history of vegetarian restaurants in Dublin here). It now hosts the Restaurant Royale/The Snug Guesthouse which we reviewed a few years […]
The College Vegetarian Cafe mentioned in the article may have been run by my Grand Aunt Olive Palmer! Looking to know more about it. I thought it was by the name of Ideal Cafe on Westland Row. I would love some information on this. My Grandfather Avary Gordon Palmer was a member of the Vegetarian Society.
Really interesting article, particularly about Moira Henry. Thanks!
Peter Lawson here. Founder member of Good Karma. I am now 71. The health authorities claim they found “droppings” in a barrel of brown rice. Wrong. It was a packet of split black lentils. We got an apology from the authorities in the Irish Times but damage was done. We were on the Gay Byrne Late Show. All our pastries got smashed up in a mad taxi ride to the studios. Got tired of commune life Aaron’s second child Oisin born upstairs , after ireturned to UK I received a letter from Paul o’ Reagan telling me that a fire had burnt down restaurant Eammon Wiggins kitchen help died,, Our leader Bob Bartlett was drowned in a boating accident between Skull &Long Island Co. Cork. Bad Karma. I made all the wooden furniture from telephone company pitch pine boxes The drug squad came once while Iwas there it was a “social” visit. So much more to tell. The whole ethos had already died in 1969. The hippie ideal was dead I was considered to be one of the better chefs. I didn’t like sharing my girlfriend my books or my socks. The band Horselips came one night and said that they’d return with their “axes”! Many contradictions and hypocrisy then Vegetarians but we wore a LOT of leather. Basically we were hanging on to a worn out idea. Converting what I seem to remember being an old glass warehouse into a restaurant was hard work. Before the VW van we went shopping in Moore St. market with a pram! So many more memories to share. A lot was packed into a small time frame, I often think about those times and wonder where everyone is now. Aaron back in Topanga Canyon I believe.. All the others Paul , Emer , Jan. Jas, Petros, Val,Kayla, and the waitresses Orla, Oona, Ina, So many people passed through all nationalities. One chap volunteered to lean the kitchen in the small hours of the morning on the condition that he was naked! I mean CLEAN the kitchen Bob Bartlett and Paul ‘ o Reagan visited me 72 or 73 when I was living in Middlesex. I now have a Thai wife and two children Holly 26 and Samsun 28 both graphic designers in London , I miss all those people from ‘72
Peter was definitely the best chef there but I’d like to point out that the Eamon who was tragically lost in the fire in the loft of the building was not Eamon Wiggins.
Hello – not sure who this is, but you’re right. The person who died in the fire was our dear friend, Eamon Cory. This is Aaron Bartlett, Bob’s widow. I miss all those wonderful people and extraordinary times, and, Ireland. I moved back to California in 1980, after Bob drowned in a storm when he tried to return by boat to Long Island where we were living. Bad Karma, indeed.
Thank you Aaron I only just saw this now. I often think of you and the family and I see the surfers in Insta. That guy hasn’t really changed at all. Lovely gang. Great to see them.
And I just saw that you are not aware of who I am . I am Emer. emerniriogain(at)mail.com I spent a weekend with Fiona this summer and she was asking if I had any news but you may have been in touch with her yourself since then.
August 28, 2020
WOW – this is amazing. Don’t know if you’ll ever see this, Peter, but I hope we get a chance to reconnect (after some 46 years ?). Just came across this article and saw your comments. What a fabulous surprise. Aaron Bartlett here. I’m in Santa Cruz, California, now, for some forty years (yes, we have ‘matured’). It would be lovely to catch up with you – many stories to share from the Good Karma days and beyond. Don’t know if you’ll ever see this, but feel free to email me at: aaronforyou(at)gmail.com. Glad to hear you have a wife and kids. Always wondered what became of you.
Side note on Govindas: just before it opened, and well after Charlie had left the building, the owners discovered one last remnant of rock n roll in the basement. Left behind, in a store room was a P.A. amp and speakers. I answered an ad in a music shop for a cheap P.A. and found myself back in the basement of the venue my band had played one of our first gigs in and it was very much still Charlies down there. While I was there the nice woman who sold me the P.A. took me on a guided tour round the almost-finished restaurant which was as we know it now. I wonder if the basement is still a stubborn holdout.
Thank you for reminding me of the name of the Well Fed Cafe, it’s been driving me mad for years, and great article thanks!