The 100 Best Restaurants '26 Mixtape.
Out-takes and remixes from the annual search for the best eating rooms in Ireland.
Rather like a struggling sports team who are getting their ass whipped for most of the game but who then manage to pull several rabbits out of the hat with several minutes to go in order to steal the win, the Irish restaurant world seized triumph from near-tragedy in late ‘25 and early 2026.
Rising costs, high VAT levels, scarce staff, and customers nervous from the whirling dervish that is international politics conspired to cast a pall over the food scene. And yet, quietly, new openings popped up and persuaded the populace that what they actually needed to salve their souls was some good cooking.
And that good cooking was everywhere, delivering the bangs for your bucks in a defiant, creative fashion, and being wildly unpredictable, and fun.
Why did the food lover cross the Derry Peace Bridge? To get a char siu pork doughnut. What is the national dish of Phibsborough? Gambas alla Borgo. Whose cooking is just like a punch in the face? Richie’s cooking in Dublin’s Kaldero. How many Italians were offended by the pineapple served on Mani’s pizzas? 388. Who wrote that growing and cooking are “something ancient, something passed down and something worthwhile”? Joe Bohan, of Galway’s Dela.
Writing the 100 Best Restaurants 2026 was great fun, thanks to all this weird and wonderful stuff, thanks to creative people being crazy, and creative. It’s a great job.
Liam Finnegan and his team in Ashford Castle could easily slide down the billionaire route, and serve up the lobster-foie gras-caviar trifecta to rich people. But they don’t. Instead, they have created a from-the-ground-up culinary style that is resonant, powerful and affecting. A roasted scallop, with peas and broad beans and early asparagus, is so in-the-season that it blows your mind. Finnegan’s team of Mayo Galacticos are outstanding.
Whilst there were no significant openings in Cork, the standards amongst the city’s and county’s best restaurants continue to climb ever higher. Dave and Anne just celebrated six years of 51 Cornmarket by getting better and better, something they have achieved every single year. This plaice ceviche with house corn chips was just out there.
An Sibin is hard on the border of West Cork and Kerry, and Katharine Murphy’s idyllic destination appears as if in a dream, when you first see it. Local crab claws and prawns with hot butter and fresh bread shows the modesty and power of this inspiring kitchen. An Sibin is also a design lover’s dream.
Dervilla O’Flynn’s dish of Ballymaloe Farm pork with fennel jus, caper gremolata, cavolo nero and roast beetoot shows all the strengths of the Ballymaloe House style, with cooking that is rooted in every way: in tradition, in texture and taste, in culture, in respect, in the region.
Eric and Ritchie are the Rodgers & Hart of Dublin food, a pair of skilled craftsmen who make it look easy to cook Iberia’s Greatest Hits, and to get it bang-to-rights from day one. Imagine being able to make Russian salad sexy. Impossible is nothing.
Honestly, with the energy in Chubby’s on a Saturday afternoon you could send a rocket to Mars. Barry and Jen Stephens delivered big time for Clontarf: gorgeous room, gorgeous cooking, and an extra €40k on the value of house prices in Dublin 3, we’d reckon. Clontarf owes Barry and Jen.
Kevin O’Donnell was so busy opening Comet that he never got the memo about how you can’t reinvent the wheel. So he just went right ahead and reinvented pommes boulangere and roast quail and gooseberry fool and pretty much everything else.
The most beautiful dining room in Ireland opened on Belfast’s Ormeau Road when Jae Young revealed Seoul Food & Studio. Michael Hartnett’s cooking was as symphonic as the style, plate after plate of strikingly emotional, heartfelt cooking.
Vada is a blast. Sarah and Hannah’s left-field restaurant is the perfect place to connect with the spirit of Stoneybatter, the Soul Side of Dublin town. For us, the most indelible image of the year’s eating was seeing the couple, one table away from us, who unselfconsciously synchronised their movements into a ballet as they licked the plate clean with their fingers.
“Ireland’s most thoughtful restaurant” was how Aishling Moore, luminary chef of Cork’s Goldie Restaurant, described Barbara and Rebeca’s St Francis Provisions, the star of Kinsale. Aish is right, because somehow St Francis manages to feel both improvised and thought-through, personal yet deeply professional, punky yet classic, avant garde yet right in-the-pocket.
You need to have some moxy to assume the role of head chef of a significant destination restaurant aged just 24. But David Harte has that moxy, and he is 24 years old and he is head chef of The Sea Rooms Restaurant at Kelly’s Hotel in Rosslare Honestly! Young people today!
It takes a team to get to Number 1, and Niall Davidson has that team in Allta. Just look at this jaw-dropping magnolia and rhubarb filo tart, from Head Pastry Chef Lali Gonzalez, which brings the wild, psychedelic adventure of dinner in Allta to a close. Talk about sending them home smiling!
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