Coney Island oysters and Ballymote beer at Dave’s new café in Rosses Point
ROSSES POINT has recently welcomed a new café to the community – Fish & Bean.
Fish & Bean opened on June 9 at the Sligo Yacht Club, providing a mostly seafood offering for all who visit the newly opened business.
The café is the brainchild of Dave Mullan, who took his first steps towards owning his own business after two decades of working in the background elsewhere.
He said: “I had been a chef in various places for more than 20 years. I decided a few months ago to approach the yacht club in Rosses Point about the space they had out there and it didn’t take long before the place was set for us to go in and see what we could do with it.”
The groundwork began at a time when Ireland was still in a precarious position where a positive summer didn’t seem quite as tangible as what we currently have.
With this in mind, the business was designed around being “Covid-proof” to ensure they could start serving the community, even if customers could not yet sit indoors for some time. Dave said: “We knew we were going to be setting up in there around four months ago. We got a few things in place and then it took a solid month of hard work to get ready to open as we are right now. Four months ago we were still in the height of Covid so at the time we had to design the place to be ‘Covidproof’ so to speak.”
Dave said that around 95 per cent of the menu is sea food and is based entirely on what is “in season”. Like other cafés and restaurants, Fish & Bean is operating on a smaller menu than they may have intended but the response to their offering has been very positive.
In addition to the locals of Rosses Point, visitors have also descended on the village to experience this new food and drink offering.
“The response has been great. We have had people here who are both locals and visitors to Rosses Point. Our first weekend was a sell-out and this past weekend has been every bit as busy but we have increased our stock. We haven’t had the greatest weather since opening so one thing we decided to do on bad days was to bring the food directly to people’s cars and campervans and they really appreciated it.”
Being based outside the central hub of Sligo town is proving less and less of hindrance as time goes on. People are willing to travel the length of the county to visit an eatery if the business has a strong reputation and Dave is confident his business can be a part of that.
Dave said: “When you have a good product at the right price, people will travel. A lot of blood, sweat and tears have gone into what we have started here and we have been thrilled with the support from near and far.”
As for moving forward during these times of loosening restrictions, Dave is encouraged that things are looking positive for the future with indoor dining set to be an option again in the coming weeks – but should tide turn and bring another wave of the new Delta variant of the virus, he said the business is prepared to quickly adapt if necessary.
“We are reasonably confident that things will continue to move forward but this goes back to making the place ‘Covid-proof’. If things did start getting worse again we are in a position to immediately start doing click and collect and we will never have to completely close.”
Dave takes great pride in the menu at Fish & Bean being almost entirely locally sourced and he feels this is the way things should always be in a place like Sligo.
“Everything you are getting here is good food, it’s all fresh, nothing is frozen. “We get oysters and mussels from Coney Island, our beer comes from Ballymote, we get lobsters from Rosses Point and our fish comes in from Killybegs.
“Nearly everything here is locally or regionally sourced and that is the way it should be,” he enthused. Fish & Bean is open Wednesday to Sunday from midday until 8pm each day. It is currently a takeaway only service with indoor dining to be announced in the coming weeks.