New restaurant opens in former Cork city centre bakery

A new restaurant opens on Wednesday evening in the former Thompson's Bakery premises on MacCurtain Street in Cork city. Chef Brian Murray, who is from Carrigtohill, returned from working abroad to launch the 36-seater which will open Tuesday to Friday for dinner, with lunch and dinner on Saturday.

Having done his apprenticeship in Midleton, Murray moved abroad to work, spending five years in Dubai at the Grand Hyatt and at the Yannick Alléno restaurant in The One & Only, before moving into private yacht catering in the Mediterranean and east coast of the US.

He started looking for a place to open in Cork last autumn and spotted the premises on Daft.ie in January. The former bakery, which at one time was said to bake a mile of its famous Swiss roll cake every day, was referred to locally as The Glass Curtain, due to its glazed frontage, according to Murray, who chose that as the name for his restaurant.

The menu promises to make much use of local Cork produce and ingredients, with influences from Murray’s experience working abroad. There is an à la carte menu and pre-theatre with two courses for €27, and three for €32.

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During the three-month fit-out, Murray discovered a photograph of 13 women working on the bakery’s cake packing line in 1953, and had it blown up to hang on a wall in the restaurant.

A social media campaign to try to identify the women got a huge response, and one of the first people through the doors of The Glass Curtain was Margaret Dowley, the only one of the 13 that Murray was able to track down who was still alive 66 years after the photograph was taken. Dowley and her son Pat and four other family members were treated to dinner during the restaurant's soft opening last week.