Harem pants. You know, harem pants are a rarity amongst food folk but, along with the Jacques Brel soundtrack, and the vintage 2CV, you will find harem pants in Fabiola’s café just outside Doolin, in West County Clare, and Fabiola Tombo will be wearing them. Who wears the harem pants around here? Fabiola Tombo, that’s who.
Ms Tombo is a patissier, a person who makes beautiful things: little turbans of garlic bread; blackcurrant marshmallows; a muffin with St Tola goat’s cheese and chilli; hot chocolate. Everything gleams with an excellent, impish creativity, and the sort of Jacques-Brel-and-harem-pants insouciance that we used to call Left Bank, or rive gauche, back in the day.
Ms Tombo’s enterprise is doubly starred because her partner, the silversmith Brian Hackett, works in the other part of what used to be the Doolin Crafts Gallery, and Mr Hackett also has a 2CV and he also makes beautiful things. “That’s one of Brian’s!”, people will say around here if they spot a Hackett ring on your finger. Just imagine people making beautiful things, and then imagine it in stereo: it’s entrancing.
Maybe these guys are just stereo people: 2 x 2CVs; 2 x Beautiful Objects; 2 x Funky Working Rooms. Perhaps they were separated at birth, and destined to meet later and work side-by-side? Who knows. All we know is that Fabiola’s Patisserie and Café is open at weekends in Doolin, and once you get off that surf board, you should head here and catch this amazing wave. Stereo, yes. Stereotypical, no.
Fabiola’s, Ballyvoe, Doolin, Co Clare 086 660 2582
Fabulous Fabiola's
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