Champagne, Cocktails and Crêpes Suzette, wining, dining and dancing in Dún Laoghaire through the ages, is a new book about Dún Laoghaire by local author Eileen O’Duffy. O’Duffy, who is a digital education, media and marketing consultant, says the limited-edition book is a labour of love, a cost recovery, local community project illustrated with photos.
The small village of Dunleary was transformed beyond recognition when the new harbour was built in the early 19th century. The new town was renamed Kingstown and later Dún Laoghaire, and became the main mail and passenger port link with Britain and Ireland’s golden gate. But the harbour town became much more than a point of arrival and departure.
Th town and its environs became a stylish and fashionable destination in its own right and a highly popular seaside resort. Champagne, Cocktails and Crêpes Suzette is a journey back in time to when local residents and visitors wined and dined in the yacht clubs, restaurants and hotels along the waterfront, and danced in the Pavilion, the ballrooms and the nightclubs.
The 160-page coffee table book provides an insight into the relationship between the harbour and the town and how this helped it to evolve into an elegant and glamorous centre of hospitality and entertainment, a ‘Dublin Riviera’. Copies of Champagne, Cocktails and Crêpes Suzette can be ordered at https://fundit.ie/project/champagne-cocktails-and-crepes-suzette
