What does Vinny feel like making today? The chef at Urban Picnic pauses, eyes narrowed in concentration: “The ramen is pretty good.”
I am greeted with a huge bowl of chicken and vegetables in steaming broth 10 minutes later. This is uncharacteristically quick, though it is 3pm on a Wednesday. It should be noted that Urban Picnic is not the place to go for speedy service, especially at weekend lunchtimes. However, everything is made fresh to order in Vinny’s kitchen – even the soup – so it’s a pretty good excuse for a longer wait. What’s more, it means you’re definitely ready for your food when it does arrive. I like to think it’s all part of an ingenious, though perhaps risky, business model. Judging by the TripAdvisor reviews, most people also seem to think it’s worth it.
For my first few visits to Urban Picnic, I opted for the vegetable wrap. I suppose the likes of Tesco and Spar set the bar quite low, as I had no idea just how good something so simple could taste. As with all Vinny’s repertoire that I have sampled thus far, this has a cleanliness to it that is its trademark: at no point have I walked away feeling either dissatisfied (as with so many “clean-eating” foods) or over-faced. The first time I ventured in, I was given seven different vegetables and the next time, another one had snuck its way in. No two of Vinny’s dishes are the same and that is what is so unusual about his place. I’ve also sampled the chicken tikka ciabatta, which is fabulous. You definitely feel that this is his calling, the nearest thing to home-cooked food when you’re in a student house on a student budget.
Set on the right hand side of George’s St Arcade (from the end nearest George’s St itself), Urban Picnic is easy to miss, surrounded as it is by vintage clothes and cases of jewellery, all under the heady scent of imported incense. Inside, too, it looks very unassuming, though it was the long, heavy tables and the bright orange walls that initially lured me in. As its namesake suggests, it is like a large-scale picnic with wooden benches and cutlery in old aluminium tins – these only adding to its quirky, offbeat charm. There is a litany of posters plastered on the walls, everything from yoga to a metal band advertising a vacancy for a drummer. As with the benches, this only serves to contribute to the communal and relaxed feel. I think anyone from the born-and-bred Dubliner to the weekend city-breaker would feel comfortable here, as there is no pretense besides a desire to create and share really wholesome food.
With dishes ranging from curries to ciabattas and back again, there really is something for everyone. It is particularly student-friendly in terms of its prices: the legendary vegetable wrap is a mere €6. Usually the benefits of healthy food don’t extend as far as your wallet, but this is a welcome exception – you will have no guilt afterwards (so much so that I routinely go to Krust down the street and get a warm cookie to cancel out the vegetable intake, but that’s another review waiting to happen). With most dishes coming in at under €10, there really is no reason why Urban Picnic shouldn’t be the next place on your Dublin Eateries Bucket List – I hope I’m not the only one with one of those.
