I’m back after over two weeks of holidays away from the dusty concrete of Dublin and already missing the lowing of cows and the feel of grass under my feet down the country. To make up for it, the silly season of theatre festivals is coming up. The Ulster Bank Theatre Festival and Dublin Fringe Festival launched their festival line-ups recently to great excitement and promotion. I personally found myself dishing out over €150 for tickets to only a handful of shows, picked out of a multitude which I would really love to see.
It is a pity that the Ulster Bank Theatre Festival in particular cannot offer cheaper tickets to shows, €25 per ticket is quite expensive. So, it did gladden my little theatre and food loving heart to spot this offer recently offered by the Project Arts Centre and Conrad Gallagher’s Salon des Saveurs. For €34, you get:
- A 2 course meal at Salon des Saveurs (Food impressario Conrad Gallagher’s recent culinary venture on Aungier St.) For €45, you can get 3 courses
- A complimentary bottle of wine
- A chaffeure service to bring to you to the Project
- Your ticket into the Colleen Bawn
This is quite an impressive offer by any standards and it’s good to see that Salon des Saveurs is offering this deal as an ongoing Pre-Theatre menu and chauffeur service. The menu’s pretty good too with some tasty looking salmon dishes, scallops, beef and quail and whatever anyone wants to say about Gallagher and his financial exploits, it doesn’t seem like he was ever the type to turn out sub standard food.
To their credit, the Project have been quite industrious with attracting a crowd in and regularly features pre theatre offers in conjunction with Milano’s, the restaurant franchise which seems to be popping up all over the country.
As a side comment, the Ulster Bank Theatre Festival have developed accommodation deals with a number of hotels across Dublin during their festival period, but I think it would be great to see something similar in terms of restaurants or gastro pubs for the audience members in Dublin or even a special offer on tickets – maybe mid week buy one ticket get a second half price but maybe they have a big enough audience and won’t need to worry about getting bums of seats. Either way I’m close to broke but still willing to dish out for the Colleen Bawn!
Quality Waffle 
4 responses to “Theatre and Food: Cheap as Chips”
Agree that the PAC are doing a great job this year. Both innovative and affordable. I saw that offer come in. Having seen CB already, though, it was not for me!
I know what you mean re ticket prices for the upcoming festivals. Like you, I am a paying customer who has to watch what they spend. At the same time, I appreciate (as I am sure you do!) that bringing in good quality touring groups for short runs is not an easy venture to undertake. However, perhaps more should be done for those who show the most loyalty to the festival. For example, the JDIFF have been doing some decent offers for dedicated enthusiasts…
It is indeed fiercely expensive to stage a show, money is not frittered away in theatre and stage actors definitely are not paid enough but festivals offer so much to the audience in terms of international theatre all in the short space of 2 weeks that it makes it a very expensive period for anyone interested in seeing something new.
I wasn’t too interested in the Colleen Bawn but haven’t been to a play in quite a while so I think I’ll be off to see it during the week.
Just saw the theatre festival does special deals with restaurants around Dublin, happy days http://www.dublintheatrefestival.com/restaurants/
Well, there’s another foot in the mouth moment for me! Good stuff, thanks for the info Eoin! Nice selection of restaurants too 🙂