Finding the best
Reflections and Takeaways on the 2024 restaurant scene in Ireland
The research for our recently-published 100 Best Restaurants in Ireland was carried out against the backdrop of hospitality closures and a general air of calamity in the food business. And yet, when some of these restaurants opened, the clamour for seats was greater than anyone expected or predicted. Who could have known?
Much of our research for the edition was carried out early in the year. We were able to observe at close hand just how the industry is changing:
Here are Ten Take-Aways from the 2024 100 Best Restaurants:
The 7.30pm rule is over. Irish people, thanks to online booking, now eat early, or late. The old mania where everyone turned up at 7.30pm for dinner has been laid to rest, by electronic booking.
Restaurants no longer answer the telephone. Good luck trying to speak to someone before you arrive.
If you are good, they will come. Ciaran Sweeney cooks for 80 diners every night in The Olde Glen, in the remotest part of North Donegal, miles from any centre of population.
Cork is flying it, Boy. The best Leeside destinations are turning their tables three times a night at weekends.
Dear Old Dirty Dublin. Forget the Dear bit: Dublin is just seriously dirty, with a momentous litter problem right across the city.
Age shall not wither them. Ross Lewis, Derry Clarke and Paul Flynn are all enjoying their Late Period of cooking enormously. Veterans? Phooey!
Wine bars are where it is at. Galway’s Darog, Dublin’s Note and Kinsale’s St Francis Provisions are leading the way with sublime food, and perfect wines.
Social Media still matters. Shifting algorithms have destroyed the community aspect of social media as investors chase financial returns, but the medium still has clout, and can’t be ignored. You just have to do it right.
Galway city is the prototype. Galway’s culinary strength-in-depth is extraordinary, and shows how a bunch of talented people can build a food scene from next-to-nothing: 20 years ago the city was a dire place for food. Today Galway is one of the best destinations for eating on the planet.
Hospitality needs help! Despite the positive signs, reducing VAT to 9% would help everyone. A west coast hotelier told us recently that the storm of extra costs in the business had increased his costings by no less than €1 million per year. Follow @Vat9.now to hear honest stories from the industry.
Our annual 100 Best Restaurants in Ireland 2024 was first published in The Sunday Times Ireland. For the third year in a row, we selected ten restaurants throughout the country who seemed to us, and our quartet of editors, to represent the zeitgeist of modern Irish restaurant cooking. Here are those Top Ten, and we include an extended review of Uno Mas, in Dublin, which was placed at Number 1.
