Food at heart of once shabby town's brand new image

Food outlets are helping to transform Dún Laoghaire, with Marks & Spencer playing its part from today, writes Angela Long

It is the petits fours that have stuck in the memory. They were perfect cubes, geranium pink, beautifully decorated with swirly white icing, but, astonishingly, they also tasted good.

That was the start of a warm friendship with Marks and Spencers food department, some 20 years ago, somewhere in the stockbroker belt south of London.

Of course, in those days if you asked for a toasted cheese sandwich in the centre of the city, the cheese was added after the bread had been toasted. Convenience food was still pretty primitive.

Now, for joy, Dún Laoghaire Rathdown in Co Dublin has its own M&S Food store, opening this morning in George's Street Lower, Dún Laoghaire town, in revamped premises that formerly housed a carpet showroom. There is 3,500 sq ft of space, packed with all those convenient goodies that have overtaken bacon and cabbage as the national dish(es).

The store's advent could be seen as another step in the glamorisation of Dún Laoghaire, or alternatively as more proof of the sad demise of a distinctive but shabby Victorian townlet. Ten years ago Dún Laoghaire was in the "nicebut" category, devoid of good public spaces, entertainment venues a distant memory, restaurants few, far and for the hardy of constitution.

Today, it is buzzing and often beautiful, as the glorious bank holiday Monday just gone demonstrated. Blue skies, blue seas, dozens of yachts, now catered for amply in the marina, a wonderful Barcelona-like feel along the pavilion area opposite the DART station, with restaurants and outdoor tables packed.

The pavilion does have its rather puzzling sculpture, which only the description "big rusty-looking things" identifies adequately. But then there is the theatre, a gem which deserves a wider audience, the gym, the various upmarket apartment developments, to give that feel-good atmosphere.

The running sore down the road is the fate of the old public baths, which are apparently doomed never to reopen as a true public facility for all the people of Dún Laoghaire, but which the council cannot yet see its way to declaring ripe for demolition and building even more fancy apartments on the site.

But back to M&S, doors open at 8.30 a.m. today, with the latest in its conquer-the-world Simply Food chain, spinoffs of the bigger stores with their hallowed undies and useful tops. M&S's food products have impressed many over the years. There are even websites (www.dooyoo.com - for example) where people rave over M&S products - although all agreeing they are more expensive than other brands - and swap recommendations on which are the tastiest.

Jonathan Glenister, head of the food division of the venerable British store in Ireland, swears he has nothing to do with these sites and they are a spontaneous expression of the public taste. But he was pleased to hear of them, naturally enough.

Simply Food in Dún Laoghaire will be followed by others in the Republic, the next at Clarion Quay in Dublin's financial district in November. M&S, which also has four of its larger department stores in Ireland, is chasing other sites, but Glenister says negotiations are still under way for future developments. There are 22 of the Simply Food stores in Britain, and the master plan is for 150 by 2005.

At headquarters of Tesco, just down the road in Dún Laoghaire, they are sanguine at the prospect of the new store popping-up about midway between two large existing Tesco supermarkets, one in the original shopping centre and one in the Bloomfield's centre. Dermot Breen, director of corporate affairs Ireland, declares:

"We welcome competition in the food retail market wherever it arises. It's good for consumers and good for retailers, as it encourages better prices and higher standards of stores and service." He notes that Tesco already stocks "an extensive range of ready meals and convenience foods which are growing in consumer popularity".

Indeed, the convenience food market in Ireland has been leaping along since the late '90s. Research by Teagasc, the food and agriculture body, shows it grew by 70 per cent between 1992 and 1998, and the growth has not stopped since then.

The long-established food shops of Dún Laoghaire, of which several face the smart new arrival on the block, have only words of welcome for M&S. Whatever helps attract people into their lair, they say, can only be good. Nigel Hick, with his mother, runs Hick's sausages and pork goods shop, a dark green establishment with Art Deco lettering that has been in situ for 75 years. Nigel, who has been making and selling the famous Hick's smallgoods for 20 years himself, thinks it's "fantastic" that Marks has located its food outlet across the way from him. "It's a great idea, I'm pleased," he says.

"They do their own brand stuff, so there's no direct competition in the food. And the English wouldn't have much reputation for making a sausage round here." His first memories of his shop, which his grandfather started in the 1920s, are of "queues out the door". However he thinks his generation will be the last to run the business. "It's too hard work," he says with a rueful grin.

"T. Murphy, Victualler" says the sign above the white-painted shop a few doors up, where Mrs Áine Murphy and her daughter sell chickens, eggs, vegetables, and joints of bacon. Time is irrelevant here, and the mad rush and fancy packaging of modern food shopping do not intrude. With a purchase of a chicken, a rasher of bacon and a generous spray of parsley are part of the deal. At Lambe's fish shop (no lamb on sale), a clean white establishment with excellent fruits de mer, Patricia Smith takes a calm view of the new store.

Patricia has a long family association with Lambe's, and has worked there herself for four years. "Anything that brings people in is great," she says. "We had a very bad year or more along this stretch, when the street was dug up for the new sewerage system and the roadworks [it is now mostly a pedestrian precinct] and we need to balance that out with more people coming along here. People will come to have a look, and come back, and do other shopping."