Back To Life

Newel’s Hotel, way back when…

iven the uncertain lockdown times we’ve been ploughing through for the last, what, 27 years now, it’s great to see local businesses reopening their doors.

Especially when you’re dealing with somewhere as old and loved as The Wicklow Arms.

Having first opened its doors way back in 1856, you can find out just how loved this Delgany institution is by jumping back through our Wicklow Arms archives, right back to when it was Newel’s Hotel. A good place to start is with the teenage diary of Mary Lucy Dann Blomfeld, charting her years living there from 1900 to 1914.

Since then, the place has been through many owners, some great, some grating. We had hoped to talk to the latest owners, Barbara and James O’Gorman, but these Delgany natives have been giving us the cold shoulder of late. Might be the Dooley connection. Ah, the joy of small town politics and big city egos.

The Mallaks

Open now with a limited bar food menu in the lounge, the Wicklow Arms’ restaurant should be up and running early in 2022. We’ll keep you posted but in the meantime, you can check out their spanking new website here for more details.

Also reopening its doors is a restaurant in Blacklion that has changed hands regularly and rapidly over the past two decades or so, going from Pebbles to Zahara without ever truly finding its feet. Or its regulars. 

That might be about to change though with the arrival of the Mallaks, a duo bringing their Middle Eastern cuisine and 20 years experience in the restaurant business to town. 

Zenobia

Going by the name of Zenobia – a third-century queen of the Palmyrene Empire in Syria – says lady of the house Diana, “All our food is fresh and cooked when you order it. We want to source as many of our ingredients as we can locally, and want to not only serve the community but be a big part of it too.

“Greystones is such a beautiful town, and opening our own restaurant here is a dream come true for both of us…”

For now, Zenobia is dine-in only, with the takeaway option following in January (“We want to make sure we get everything right at each step“), the opening hours being 3pm to 10.30pm. You can check out the menu right here.

With 15 years in the business, and already a major hit in sunny Bray, the Asian double-whammy of Koi’s Japanese cuisine and Chinese cuisine of Ling’s have moved into Three Q’s old place on Greystones main drag. The word on the streets is dang good, and hey, it’s not like Greystones don’t like their takeaways. You can find out more about Koi here and Ling’s right here.

There’s also new Asian eaterie opening at Brunel’s on the corner of SuperValu – Tony Li wants to keep the details under wraps though until he’s truly ready to rock and chicken roll.

Hasu SAT11DEC21

And the bould Jack He is up to shenanigans again, not content with Lam’s Asian Cuisine and Eskimo Pizza, and moving Fulinm into his Buoy’s Kitchen premises, the lad’s about to unleash a whole new restaurant in that vacant spot beside The Burnaby. Watch this spacer.

Suffice to say, happy chomping – and ka-chingin’ – to one and all.

You can’t go wrong with good food – so check out our A-Z of local eateries here and local takeaways here.