With St Patrick’s Day and Easter looming many will be hosting visitors from overseas in the coming weeks. If they like their food why not introduce them to cafes, restaurants and food shops that best represent modern Irish cuisine. Places where showcasing all that is good about Irish food is the priority.
Focusing on Dublin, a food tour with Fabulous Food Trails would be a wonderful way to start. The groups are small, and the guides are very well informed, visiting small, independently owned shops and restaurants where you have a chance to talk to the people there and sample the produce.
Irish cheese is world class, and the food tour includes a visit to Sheridans or Fallon & Byrne. It generally includes a trip to the Seafood Cafe, where you get to sample local oysters, and perhaps then on to Griolladh for toasties, and handmade scones fresh out of the oven at the Pepper Pot, where they are served with cream and home-made jam. There is usually a visit to George’s Street Arcade and somewhere to have a nip of Powers pot still whiskey. It is highly informative, and you will be well fed.
Other more casual outings could include a visit to one of the food markets – Temple Bar on Saturdays, or the markets in Merrion Square, Herbert Park and the Red Stables Food Market at St Anne’s Park. If you want to add a pub element to your activities, the Dublin Literary Pub Crawl is interesting and a load of fun.
From a restaurant perspective, one of the loveliest places to eat Irish food is The Winding Stair restaurant. It looks out across the Liffey and the food here makes full use of Ireland’s top producers with dishes such as Irish seafood chowder with Fingal Ferguson’s chorizo and treacle bread, and steamed cockles and Roaring Bay mussels with Clogherhead crab.
The same team of people are also behind the Woollen Mills and the Legal Eagle, a very good gastropub. Spitalfields is also in a pub, but with its Michelin Bib Gourmand, it has more of a restaurant vibe. The cock-a-leekie pie for two is one of its signature dishes.
It’s worth noting that both the Legal Eagle and Spitalfields are open on Tuesdays for dinner, when many of the city’s restaurants are closed.
For something special that reflects a more modern approach to Irish food, Allta and Library Street are spectacularly good, as is Michelin-starred Variety Jones. For an injection of culture, combine a visit to one of Dublin’s more contemporary art galleries with a dinner of tasty small plates and an interesting bottle of wine at Margadh at RHA. Also in the wine bar vein is Cellar 22, where the charcuterie platter with house-made terrine is the thing to order. And I’m a huge fan of the cheese toastie at Loose Canon, where the wine list is solidly from the low intervention side of things.
During the day, there are some lovely places for a casual meal or snack. Brother Hubbard is a great breakfast and brunch venue, the Fumbally cafe is quite special and the perfect place to stop for a bite if a tour of the Guinness Storehouse is on your schedule. If you’re checking out the Book of Kells, you’ll find very tasty salads nearby at Tiller + Grain, and for tea and cakes, there’s Queen of Tarts and the Cake Cafe, hidden behind a bookshop. It feels like a secret.
If you’re heading out to the coast, you’ll find great fish and seafood at the King Sitric in Howth and for something a bit more formal, Mamo is the place to go.
