Steak, chips, and salad for €13. Bangers and mash for a tenner. Three glasses of red for €16.50. Why, it can only be Le Bon Crubeen on Talbot Street. It’s easily one of the best cheap eats in Dublin, and a very pleasant place to dine too. Geordie Sue and I ate there recently. It [...]

Somewhere cheap. Check. Somewhere you can sit down. Check. Somewhere with decent food and friendly service. Check. If you didn’t already know – sheesh – Cafe Bliss, down a little lane between Camden Street and Harcourt Street, has one of the best value meals you’ll find in Dublin. Your €9.95 will get you a two [...]

Our pal Rosemary MacCabe, Irish Times journalist and fashion blogger, is looking for your advice. Thanks for the post Rosemary! Hi there! Seeing as I’ve stopped writing my own blog, I thought I’d send you a wee rant from an experience I had recently, because I genuinely want to know what people would think. So what [...]

After bleating on about how Irish restaurants can’t get steak right, I went and had a steak with my friend Roz last night. We had planned to go to Le Cafe des Irlandaises on George’s Street, but were disappointed to find it closed down. Instead, we were lured by Fallon and Byrne‘s (Exchequer St, Dublin [...]

Reader review: Marco Pierre White’s Irish restaurants can’t cook steak. Even Irish steakhouses can’t cook steak. Over the weekend, my sister Barbara Moran fell victim to this peculiarly Irish problem, in Marco Pierre White’s on Dawson Street: The starter was great but me and Keith both ordered T-bone steaks and at €33 a pop you [...]

There’s plenty of gardens and parks around Ireland with a café tacked on. There’s plenty of places where an unimaginative display of cold quiche and lasagna, ready to be bunged into a microwave at a moment’s notice and served with a dull broccolli and feta salad, strikes a predictable deadness in our hearts. They’re like Avoca’s many mediocre, [...]

Another shout out to a deservedly popular Ranelagh restaurant: Dillinger’s. First flagged by our friend and regular commenter Rebecca, I recently included it as an “honourable mention” in a post on Ireland’s best customer service. That wasn’t really fair. When it comes to customer service, Dillinger’s, which serves “American inspired” food, deserves more than an [...]

Brunch! Being partial to a Sunday roast, I’m rather late to this hybrid party. But a good brunch in a nice restaurant, surrounded by the papers, is surely one of the nicest ways to while away a weekend afternoon. Somehow I found myself in Sandymount a few weeks ago, and we quickly settled on Itsa4. [...]

I spent the Bank Holiday weekend stuffing my face with vegan food at an incredibly relaxing and hugely inspiring non-religious beach retreat. We were lucky enough to be fed by Mary Farrell, owner of Cafe Fresh in Dublin’s Powerscourt Centre and author of what I think is the best vegetarian cookbook around. Mary was asked [...]

Taking a break from the relentless recital of bad customer service, I thought I’d highlight some spots where I’ve had positive experiences. Although there’s a serious problem with customer service in too many Irish restaurants, I’ve no doubt that I was very unfortunate to have five bad service experiences, across six locations, in eight days. [...]