Brunch at Brother Hubbard (Dublin, Ireland)

American hipsters, eat your heart out. Brother Hubbard in Dublin, Ireland has your foodie brunches beat with its local, homemade and quirky Mediterranean-influenced food that will make even the grumpiest, most ironic tourist or Dubliner cheer up and shut up about that band that you’ve probably never heard of.

While I’m lucky to call Dublin a second home, and have friends and family there to show me around and make sure I’m not committing any Dublin faux pas (even though I willingly do, from time to time – I am a tourist, after all), the funny thing about this place is that half the Dubliners I know that I mention it to have never heard of it.  That’s like hipster GOLD!

Anyway, my good friend Eoin and his lovely friend Claire took me and Luke here during our New Year’s Week jaunt to the Emerald Isle after I requested something delicious for brunch. My prayers were answered. Situated Continue reading

Kato Cafe, submarinos, shopping and fun

I met up with a friend yesterday at Kato Cafe on Civit and had a lovely afternoon of lounging around on their couches, drinking tea (Patagonia Bee by Inti Zen (Click here for more info)- which is a delicious vanilla, honey, and cacao blend), eating snacks and finishing with my first submarino.  A submarino is an Argentine hot chocolate; it’s made with hot milk and a chocolate bar that slowly melts into the milk and makes this not-too-sweet-but-oh-so-delectable hot cocoa that is perfect for the current onset of winter here in Mendoza.  With reasonable prices and a great ambience, I think Kato will be a new favorite haunt of mine.

We then embarked on a journey to buy clothes/scarves/boots/coats in the boutiques that line Avenida Arístedes Villanueva (or, simply, Arístedes). Found a great little boutique with a French flair called Cosset, which is attached to another really cute cafe called Clementine. The shopgirl was sweet and attentive, and very helpful. I ended up buying a sweater-dress and my friend bought a few other things. From there, we continued down the street hitting other boutiques along the way. I’ll do a post about this experience in a separate entry, for the sake of brevity here.

After working up a thirst buying things we didn’t need, we ended up at Antares, which I’ll post about in a separate post as well.

Last, but not least, I ended up going to see a friend’s band play at the Liverpool Pub in centro. It was great, but there were some problems with logistics and other things, and I ended up going alone and nobody met up with me there. Woe is me. At least they played some Oasis and U2 covers, and I was pleased. 

All in all, a good day.