Crawford Art Gallery café to reopen next week with modern twist
The Green Room in the Crawford Art Gallery is set to open next weekend.
Cork’s Crawford Art Gallery will once again open for dining next week as new owners seek to revive classic dishes with a modern twist.
Following the closure of the gallery’s renowned original in-house café after 35 years in August, its new owners hope to bring back the classics with their own contemporary twist — and dinner sittings too.
Veteran Cork restaurateurs Beth Haughton and her husband Harold Lynch will open The Green Room next Friday evening.
“We will put our own stamp on what is obviously an iconic café in Cork,” Ms Haughton said. “We will bring all the classics that have always been in the Crawford and then we will add our own contemporary twist to those dishes.”
She said the café has been “shaken up a bit”. The Green Room will serve breakfast from 9am, lunch from 12pm, and, for the first time at the gallery, dinner will be available from 5pm on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.
“It’s going to look quite dramatically different than it did two weeks ago,” she said. “I think it’s going to look really pretty.”
The name, The Green Room, comes from Ms Haughton’s colour choice for the room in keeping with similar décor elsewhere in the gallery such as the blue room with statues in the gallery.
“It’s exciting because it’s somewhere else to go in the city centre — especially in the evening. I think it’d be lovely for people to go into the opera house or gallery [followed by dinner at The Green Room].”
Preparations are underway for the opening next Friday and although the kitchen is yet to get up and running, Ms Haughton assured people “there will be wine!”
The original café was a popular spot for breakfast and lunch in the city, accumulating many regulars across over three decades before announcing its permanent closure in August.
The gallery café was opened in 1986 by the late Myrtle Allen, and later taken on by her daughter, Fern. It regularly featured in the McKenna Guide’s top 100 restaurants in Ireland and most recently was run by celebrated chef, Sinéad Doran, for more than a decade.
Ms Doran said the decision to close the beloved café must be viewed in the context of the struggles during and after Covid, and in the longer-term context of the gallery’s extended closure from late next year for a multi-million capital regeneration project.
Ms Haughton and Mr Lynch have worked in the industry for 27 years; running Harold’s in Douglas, Citrus which was also in Douglas, followed by 16 years running Docklands on Lapps Quay.
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