Bull Lane in Portlaoise

🕗 opening times

comments 4

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  Catherine Casey

  :: 22 March 2018 18:13:44

  Amazing sourdough sandwiches, great coffee and friendly staff. Highly recommended

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  Lizl Grobler

  :: 21 February 2018 15:15:59

  Fantastic little place, great coffee and delicious sourbread and deli food. Ideal for a healthy take away. Limited place to sit, but if you do find a spot it’s lovely

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  Dawg Tired

  :: 10 April 2017 14:14:47

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  JKay GreenStarsProject

  :: 28 March 2017 01:13:54

  Delicious coffee! (4/5 green stars) Bull Lane is a great little delicatessen and café with very friendly and helpful staff. It’s mostly designed to be a place to take food and drinks to go but it does have a counter and stools at the window. I picked up a flat white and a small Portuguese sweet cream tart. The espresso coffee was delicious, and the flat white was really well made. The coffee, from a traditional Italian roaster, is actually a 50:50 Arabica/Robusta beans and it blew away my misconception that you can’t make good coffee with Robusta beans. The tart was interesting; the sweet cream was like dense sweet custard, rich with egg yolks. I’m not crazy about custardy things (why did you buy it then?!) but still enjoyed it! My brother goes there often, in particular for their Reuben sandwich, and highly recommends their savory food (along with the coffee!). They have just been has been nominated for Best Café Award in the Restaurants Association of Ireland – congrats folks! I’m also giving them 4/5 “green stars” for social and environmental impact. They have a lot of healthy and vegetarian options and their food is made in-house, including condiments like chutneys, dressings and pickles. They source ingredients locally whenever possible; from either the green grocer next door or their own garden (the owners have a poly tunnel). They source their local cheese directly from makers or via Sheridan’s and their bread is from a local artisan baker. They use free-range eggs, including some from hens belonging to a staff-member! Their coffee is from Portioli, and old family-run roaster from Milan. It’s probably because Portioli are so old-school that they have nothing to say about their coffee sourcing practices and they also don’t have any certifications (Organic, Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance, etc.) so it’s hard to judge for sure. Coffee aside, Bull Lane deserves kudos for making the effort to be independent from Big Food and intensive agriculture. Interested in writing green star reviews? If so, contact me! (greenstarsproject)