We usually write an end-of-year summary of our favourite meals of the year. At the end of 2022, we didn’t. I forgot. Or I wasn’t bothered. Can’t remember which.

Anyway, too little too late, here is a round-up of our favourite meals, home and abroad, over the last twelve or thirteen months.

Last year, at the end of a cold and wet February, we travelled to Copenhagen. The trip was built around a meal in Noma, which was fantastic. Again. Noma 2.0 had evolved significantly since our previous visits, which were to Noma 1.0, but the food is just as awe-inspiring. Anyway, I wrote about that Noma visit here, so I won't bore you with it again. There were other culinary highlights on this Nordic trip. The one that is still vivid in my memory is Selma. Selma does smørrebrød and that is pretty much it, but they are the best smørrebrød. Oh God, they are good. So good. A lovely little restaurant with a small, but well-curated wine list to go with a selection of amazing smørrebrød. If you are in Copenhagen, you must go. We will every single time we visit this beautiful city.

It was a week in Alba next. Our splash-out meal here was in the much-lauded Piazza Duomo. This meal started brilliantly and ended splendidly, but much of the middle of our tasting menu was a damp squib. Or a pungent sea urchin in this case. The dishes were a little bit samey-samey texturally with a token cracker repeatedly appearing on a side plate to add some crunch. A cracker which looks at you as if saying “nope, I don’t know what I am doing here either”.

The food in the Piedmont region of Italy is of a crazy high standard though, with no one restaurant standing out, but a host of amazing meals in family-run trattorias. Sitting in the centre of the beautiful village of Barolo, drinking Barolo, with a plate of sausage ragu and tajarin pasta - pure bliss.

Our mid-summer jaunt last year was two weeks in Alsace and Burgundy. A lot of tosh has been spoken about a decline of dining standards in France to the extent that other countries, like Ireland, are surpassing it. Such nonsense. The average restaurant in France, the one you didn’t find in a guide, the one that isn’t on trend, will usually still deliver a fine meal, like the one we had in Le Cellier Volnaysien in the village of Volnay. Anyway, I digress.

If I had to pick one meal out as our favourite in Alsace it would probably be Bord'eau on the river in the centre of Colmar. A truly lovely and picturesque meal. In Burgundy, it might have been La Cabotte in the village of Nuit-Saint-George, where we enjoyed a meal outside in the square in the centre of this old town.

Our last holiday of the year was our first trip to Lisbon. What a beautiful city. We loved it. The four of us were having a terrific time until we all got terrible flu and spent the last four days in our apartment ordering food on our phones. We did manage to get 4 great meals before we were struck down. Gorging on all types of shellfish in Cervejaria Ramiro, was a great value treat, that all four of us really enjoyed. Cervejaria Ramiro is a sort of right-of-passage when visiting Lisbon. SÁLA de João Sá delivered a higher standard than we were expecting with some stunning dishes. But the highlight was without a doubt Jose Avillez’s flagship restaurant Belcanto. We had heard mixed things about Belcanto, but the food was clever, whimsical, perfectly executed and a great representation of the local cuisine. Fantastic service. Great wine pairings. A true world-class experience.

What about at home? Well, we didn’t eat out as much as we would have liked, but still managed a few brilliant meals. In the last twelve months, we have been fortunate enough to dine in Liath four times. Our barometer for eating out in the evenings is: “Is this restaurant worth a babysitter and all the hassle that goes with it?” Liath definitely satisfies that condition and then some. Chef Damien Grey’s food is unique, frequently balancing big, complex flavours with a fantastic use of acidity that amplifies the main ingredient on the dish. This was typified in what is one of the best dishes I have ever eaten. Anywhere! Ever! When the venison loin, a truffled bordelaise sauce with a side of venison tartar and foie gras was put in front of me alarm bells rang. It just seemed too much. Rich on rich with a side of rich, with not a vegetable in sight. I was wrong. Very wrong. It was heavenly perfection. Why? Because the bordelaise sauce wasn’t really a bordelaise sauce at all. It was much lighter with a terrific acidity; with the truffles somehow muted to just give a subtle earthiness. It was a sauce for the Gods and it tied all those other big flavours together. The food is Liath is creative and exciting - if we could only dine in one restaurant in Ireland at the moment, it would be Liath.

In December, we bagged ourselves a lunch reservation in Aimsir, a restaurant that has been delivering at a world-class level since opening in 2019. Our lunch, although not hitting the same dizzy heights as previous meals, was another lovely experience. It will be interesting to see what happens next with Aimsir, with chef-patron Jordan Bailey and wife Majken Bech-Bailey, the husband and wife team who made this restaurant so successful, moving on to a new challenge. The biggest challenge will be for the owners of Aimsir trying to replace such a talented duo.

A restaurant that is aiming to be judged at the same level as Liath and Aimsir, is Terre, which opened in 2022 in the Castlemartyr Resort in Cork. We visited whilst on a two-day stay in the hotel in February. It would be hard to find any fault in the dining or service, both of which were exemplary. The food slightly under delivered in comparison. The tasting menu offered up a few great dishes, the pineapple sundae dessert possibly being the best of the lot. Other servings, however, lacked balance with some components, which should have shone as the star of the dish, being lost. 

A highlight of last summer was a family lunch at Locks Restaurant in portobello. The food in Locks has gone up a couple of levels since Chef Andy Roche took over. A sharing main course of guinea fowl was just superb and the whole menu managed to be both homely and modern. A really great spot for any occasion.
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Possibly the most improved restaurant we visited recently was Volpe Nera in Blackrock. I say improved, but it was already a very good restaurant, but judging by a meal we had there recently, chef Barry Sun has moved his cooking up a notch since our visit last year. This was exemplified in a perfectly executed pigeon course. Add this food to a well-curated wine list and warm service and you are on to a winner with a meal in Volpe Nera.

Before I sign off, I must mention are local restaurant Woodruff. Our family loves Woodruff. Some of Ireland's best produce, cooked with skill and love with a fantastic wine list. 
 
G 

Well, it’s been an interesting couple of weeks in our gastronomic sphere.

First was the release of the 2022 Michelin guide. Besides my usual little chuckle at the food writers who throughout the year will drop Michelin into their reviews to add a bit of gravitas, but then cry foul when the stars do not align with their predictions, I normally couldn’t care too much about the release of the revered guide, but I was delighted to see Liath get recognized for the consistent improvement it continues to show – it is a more accomplished restaurant than it was when it was Heron & Gray, and it was pretty good then. 

A couple of days after the Michelin stars were announced, we were boarding a flight to Copenhagen. The build-up to this jaunt was fraught with anxiety. First is that modern-day, lingering background worry that one of the four of us will get covid and be unable to travel. Then there was the looming Storm Eunice which was threatening all week to hit hardest at the time we were due to take-off. But, we got there, a bit late for our dinner reservation in Kodyens Fiskebar, which turned out to be terrible.

Our primary reason for travelling to Copenhagen was for a meal in Noma. We ate in Noma three times previously, the last being in 2015, and it is where we had the two best gastronomic experiences of our lives. Since then, Noma has moved home and changed their approach. Now they are hyper-focused on the season, even more so than they were before, and change their menu three times a year to reflect the best the climate has to offer. In Summer, they focus solely on vegetation, and you will get no seafood or meat. In the autumn the menu is everything from the forest, such as game and mushrooms. And winter and spring, the season we went for, is strictly based around the ocean, when the cold water brings out the best of it.

We were a bit apprehensive going back. Could this approach match the experiences we had before, with so many of the dishes still etched in our brain and still, to this day, a regular talking point around our kitchen table? Would we miss the diversity of having different seasonal offerings, instead of just a whole menu focused on one genre? What if it just didn’t live up to our, probably untenable, expectations that the restaurant themselves set for us previously?

Noma has won the World’s Best Restaurant Award five times now, more than any other restaurant, including as recently as October, so surely it must be as good as ever, right? Maybe, just maybe, it’s even better. Can there really be such thing as the best restaurant in the world? It seems puerile to grant a title of “best” to anything that is so subjective and down to individual experiences and tastes. Notice above, we said we had the best experiences of our lives in Noma, we are not saying that they are the best restaurant in the world. I am always wary of any critic who tells you that a certain restaurant is “the best” in the world, a country or even a city. What they probably mean, if they are not just trying to seduce us with an attention-grabbing headline, is they had their best experience in this restaurant. Also, to declare anything as the “best” would require that the critic has recently ate in all other restaurants that may be vying for that title.

The World’s Best 50 Awards, for all its silliness, does draw attention to the industry and, at times, can recognize a chef and restaurant who are pushing the envelope and give that restaurant the opportunity to push it forward even more. Without the World’s Best 50, restaurants like Noma, and previously elBulli, would not have had the same influence on the culinary world as they went on to have.

Noma was not the first restaurant to diligently focus on the season and the provenance of the local landscape, but because of their success, and, it must be said their brilliance, they have had a profound influence, not just on many chefs and restaurants around the world, who started to centre their food more around their immediate environment and local food producers, but also on what we eat at home. In recent years there has been a greater push by supermarkets to source local ingredients and support local, small, farm producers. This, in part, is down to the influence that Noma has had.

There are many examples in history of a chef that has had a major influence on the food offerings in restaurants worldwide (Careme, Escoffier, Bocuse, Bras, Keller, Adria, Waters to name a few) and Noma’s Rene Redzepi has possibly had as big an influence as any in modern times. Even in Ireland, many of our most lauded restaurants are influenced by what has been named as the New Nordic food movement, which Redzepi unknowingly started when he setup Noma.

Just like after elBulli’s success some years earlier, some chefs, eager to jump on to a trend, created perverse manifestations of this New Nordic philosophy. While after elBulli’s rise to fame, some ill-guided chefs started to put foams, airs, spherification on every dish, since Noma there are chefs putting flowers and grass from their local vicinity on everything that left their kitchen, sometimes to laughable effect.

But, the New Nordic wave, even when misinterpreted, has strengthened relationships between the chef and the farmer, has made us look around our own neighbourhood for what is delicious and, consequently, has reduced food miles. This, overall, must be a good thing.
Possibly the biggest impact Noma has had has been on the Nordic region. This region, whilst having traditional food, had no compelling food culture like the French, Spanish or Italians. Noma changed that and the Nordic region, with the identity of provenance and food that represents the season always being at the fore, is now a world-class culinary food destination. This is thanks, in no small part, to the Noma alumni who have gone on to open some formidable restaurants of their own.

So, what of Noma in 2022? Could it match our experience of seven years previous? Would it be worth the high price tag (and a meal in Noma comes with a feckin’ eye-watering price tag)? In a word: Yes. But that doesn’t paint the whole picture. Noma 2.0 felt like a different restaurant than Noma 1.0 and it was different in ways I wasn’t expecting.

Dishes in Noma 1.0 focused on an earthy feeling, with dishes having their subtlety shine through with brilliant use of acidity. This may sound abstract, but the food managed to taste like a reflection of the season, of the time and place. Many of the Ocean dishes on our Noma 2.0 tasting menu were bolder and they were accentuated with spice and heat that played no part in Noma 1.0. I suspect this change came out of Noma’s popups in Australia, Japan and Mexico. This spice and heat were deftly and expertly used, and it had the effect of bringing out the best of the seafood component on the dish.

When we visited Noma in 2014 and 2015 there were many dishes that blew us away. These are the sort of dishes that you don’t talk about at the time, but instead they would throw you into a savouring silence and only a glance at each other is needed to know we are both engrossed in something we will never forget. These are not only 10 out of 10 dishes, but 11 out of 10 as they have that factor of being immortal in our memory. On this same menu, there were some dishes that were excellent, but I would probably only give them 8 or 9 out of 10.
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On our 2022 Ocean menu, while there may have been less of those silence-inducing 11 out of 10s, there was no dish that would get less than 9 and giving any dish a 9 would be harsh. The consistent brilliance across the whole menu was astounding.

Each dish is based around a piece of fish or shellfish. A blue mussel filled with a quail egg was complexity masquerading as delectable simplicity. I have never had squid as good as that was cooked with koji spores, simply amazing. I could go on, but I reckon you get the impression by now that the food was bloody great. But allow me to just mention the one dish that may have been the most astonishing:  a dessert made with oyster – yes you read that correctly. The taste of oyster came across stronger than you expect, but with the addition of quince amazake to balance it out into the perfect dessert, which in the wrong hands could be a calamity. We were left speechless and shaking our heads at the awesomeness of this dish.

In Noma 2.0, Redzepi has managed to add extra layers to the food, still managing to represent the Nordic season, while focusing each dish on one superbly sourced ocean offering. The components in each dish complement each other, but are still identifiable in their own right and there is a minimalist restraint with each dish, with ingredients only added if really needed.

The wine pairings were perfectly matched, with a lot of natural wine and the occasional skin contact wine thrown in. They were generous with the vino too, constantly topping up our glasses.

The service this time around had slightly changed from Noma 1.0. Previously each dish would be presented to the diner with a detailed story of its development and makeup. Now, the dish is served with a brief outline of what is on the plate and you are left to your own devices to eat as you wish. Either way, we always found the service in Noma faultless, and this time was no exception.
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Best Restaurant in The World? Who Knows? Who Cares? All I know is that Noma is our favourite restaurant in the world, and we are already planning when we can get back for the summer and autumn menus.

​2021. Where did this year go? It doesn't feel like 12 months ago that I was writing about 2020, but here we are again getting ready for another Christmas and planning our delicious trips for 2022. As this year comes to an end, I will remember the first 6 months of this year very differently than I will the last 6 months.

We started the year wondering when we would get to eat in a restaurant again, when we would get a holiday abroad and, maybe most importantly, when would we get vaccinated. It turns out that Michelle only had to wait until the end of January for her vaccine and me until July. Now Michelle has had her booster and we are getting nearer to little Emma getting her vaccine, which will be a great relief.

At the end of August, we finally got back on a plane for a holiday in San Sebastian, our happy place. We were worried about the effect the pandemic measures would have on San Sebastian, but with a bit of common sense, it turned out to be an amazing ten days for all four of us. Because of covid, and the kids being unvaccinated, we avoided the pinxho bars and instead opted for eating outdoors in restaurants. We had so many amazing meals. If we lived in San Sebastian, Gerald's Bar is somewhere we would go a lot…….and I mean a lot. Its three courses of great produce quick simply with delicious effect and its such great value. They were welcoming of our girls in each restaurant and, in turn, our little trouble-makers gobbled up fish and prawns like famished maniacs. It was great to get out of the house and away from work for ten days and just relax, eat great food and drink fantastic wine. We even got a meal with just the two of us in Arzak. We have been there many times, it is as good as ever and it was great to see Juan-Mari and Elena back in the dining room.

We always try to eat one special meal without the kids on each holiday and we did that again in Disfrutar on our October visit to Barcelona. This was our second time eating in this critically acclaimed restaurant, from three elBulli alumni, and both were spectacular. The food is tremendous, the service is polished and hospitable, but most of all the experience is brilliant fun.  The other memorable meal of Barcelona was Dos Pebrots – the food here, based on modernized old European recipes, is extremely clever and thrillingly delicious. We shall be back in Dos Pebrots on our next stay in Barcelona.

But, what about at home….

So, as a result of the covid surge after the Christmas and New Year celebrations, we found ourselves starting 2021 back in lockdown and relying on restaurant boxes for our gastronomic fix. So, let's give a shout out to the restaurants that got us through these six months of gastronomic isolation. Allta continued their excellent and great value weekly Allta Box until they opened in their summer house. Uno Mas delivered us an occasional cure to our longing to eat there. Sunil Ghai's new restaurant Street in Windy Arbor hit our need for quality Indian food. Back To Dine was a delicious treat, especially paired with wines selected by oenophile Cathryn Bell from WineRover.ie.  The Liath To-Go boxes continued to delight with chef Damien Grey trying to get as close as possible to the restaurant quality and experience in peoples' homes.

So, let's talk about Liath.

We went back to eat in Liath at the end of August, our first time to eat there since March 2020 when we dined there the night before lockdown. Was it as good as 2020? Well no it wasn’t, it was better. Grey, who seems to have the common infliction among many of the top chefs of being restlessly dissatisfied and always looking to push things to another level, has indeed brought the food in to that next level. Even long-standing dishes have improved: his, now famous, cone is even more delicious, and the chocolate dessert has been lightened, without compromising flavour. 

Grey has his own style, and his food is not derivative. He isn't following the New Nordic strict adherence to local, but the food is still rooted in the season, serving the best seasonal Irish produce combined with the best seasonal ingredients from around the world. It is evident that Grey has a superb palate, as Grey's dishes manage to harmonise many big flavours, but still maintain the individual taste of each ingredient.

The cookery in Liath is skilled and always on-point. A duck and lavender dish we had In August was a good duck as we have had anywhere. And a pigeon dish we had there in November was equally as brilliant, served with a sauce I would gladly drink out of a pint glass. But, perhaps the best dish we had in Liath this year was the salsify, liver and raspberry serving we had in our most recent visit. It was complex, clever and just, well, feckin’ divine – a real showstopper. While Liath pushes the food onwards, it is still managing to keep its jovial, convivial and neighbourhood feel in the cosy, but elegant dining room. The noise and atmosphere remind me of meals in Le Chateaubriand in Paris or Relae in Copenhagen. 

Our first indoor meal of the year was in Aimsir at Cliff at Lyons, another fantastic restaurant that is pushing on to bigger and better things. Aimsir, since it opened, has been a world-class restaurant where everything from the food, to the wine, to the cadence of service is carefully considered, but it is mainly the food that has us going back again and again. Chef Jordon Bailey sources some of the best of the produce that Ireland has to offer to deliver a highly skilled 18-course menu of technical, polished deliciousness. The team are expanding their farm and even have their own pigs now, so we are excited to return.

Over recent years there has been a lot of talk about how the Irish restaurant scene has developed into one that can stand up to the best on the world’s stage. Much of this was parochial, premature back-slapping, but restaurants such as Liath and Aimsir are truly exciting and will do a lot to push food in Ireland forward.

The big news in the Irish restaurant industry in 2020, was chef Mickael Viljanen leaving The Greenhouse and taking over as a chef-patron in Chapter One, with an abundance of media fanfare. We went in September for the lunch tasting menu and can confirm that Valjanen has hit the ground running, delivering the same high standards that he built up over years in The Greenhouse. It was an excellent and enjoyable lunch, let down only slightly by a below-par venison dish and service that was a tad on the clumsy side. The dessert of chocolate, miso and coffee with a milk sorbet was a particular highlight – a stunning way to finish a meal.

I'd like to give a shout to our local restaurant, Woodruff, which might just be the most improved restaurant of 2021. The food has been refined and dishes are now more succinct, meaning the components are given more care. We love going up there for lunch as a family, and it doesn't hurt that it has a brilliant wine list.

So, what about 2022.

Well, we have a trip to Copenhagen in February to look forward to and a much-anticipated return to Noma, our first since they moved home. In April we are spending a week in Alba to gorge on truffles and slurp on Barolo. At home, we want to get back to Liath and Aimsir, along with many meals in Woodruff. We hope to eat out more in 2022, than we did in 2021. We will go back to Etto, Uno Mas, Locks and 3 Leaves, to name but a few. We need to make a trip out to Howth to try Mamo and I think a nice family lunch in Volpe Nero and Bresson is certainly on the cards. Of course, these gastronomic fuelled jaunts, both home and abroad, are dependent on the pandemic variants not setting us back, but with promising data showing the positive effect of boosters and pharmaceutical companies being able to quickly adapt their vaccines to any variant, we are hopeful that 2022 can be even better than 2021.

So, stay safe, get vaccinated, get boosted and have a delicious Christmas and 2022.
 
G

I can’t wait to see how television show Reeling in the Years will squeeze 2020 into a 30-minute show. Do you remember we had a general election in February? I remember because we watched the count from an apartment in Barcelona. That week-long holiday seems a very long time ago, and a whole different world away, now. Shortly after our gastronomic junket to Spain life was to change considerably. Over the next 9 months, and counting, the world has had to deal with a lot.

We all had to deal with the anxiety of a new virulent disease that, so far, has killed nearly two million people and debilitated many more. A disease that we are still learning about, including the long term effects for some who catch it, even those who may have had no symptoms. An illness that, despite what you might read on social media, is far worse than just the seasonal flu.
We have had to deal with wearing a mask, and worse than that, dealing with those too ignorant to wear a mask. I don’t care if your Aunty Mary saw a video on YouTube saying they don’t work, it makes the vulnerable feel more comfortable and protects us all, so feckin’ wear a mask….muppets!

We have seen the spread of misinformation on social media and the staggering number of people who think they know more about immunology, virology, data science and epidemiology than the vast majority of experts around the world. And those who source their information, news and ‘facts’ from attention-seeking, bloviating charlatans on the internet. Like some do with climate change, we can all sit on the sofa and scan the web looking on the fringes for opinions and interpretations of data to suit the narrative that we want to hear, a narrative that would rid us of personal responsibility, but it doesn’t change reality. I am sure the leaders of every country, that isn’t run by a lunatic, would love to go back to March and do things differently and we all have a democratic obligation to question our elected officials and hold them to account, but it needs to be done so with facts, and above all it needs to be done so with humility, as it is easy to govern through a pandemic on social media from the comfort of your sofa.

Despite anti-science rhetoric, it will be science that gets us out of this. The countries and districts that followed the science, generally fared better than others during the pandemic. We are going to have several different vaccines in a few months which is a fantastic achievement of human ingenuity (cue the anti-vaccine loons). The number of studies going on all around the world will, hopefully, leave us in a position to better handle the next pandemic and maybe we can protect the vulnerable whilst keeping other critical services open to those who need it.

One favourable by-product of this year was that I, like others, got out of the rat race somewhat, no longer commuting in an out of work on packed public transport and getting home just in time to put the younglings to bed. I see more of my family now and I am more productive away from an office environment, so it is a win-win.

Anyway, you probably came here to read about food, sorry…

Despite not being able to eat out for most of the year, we still had some memorable restaurant experiences. In Barcelona we had two very memorable meals, one in our regular haunt Bodega 1900, which never disappoints, and the other in Disfrustar, the innovate restaurant run by three elBulli alumni. It was a fantastic holiday, full of amazing food and wine and two very happy children who had a ball. We went home from this holiday, looking forward to two more that we had planned for 2020 – they didn’t happen.
We were lucky enough to eat in the brilliant Aimsir twice this year. Once in February before the madness and once in August. We have said it before but Aimsir is special and continues to get better. The food and the service are world class. A dish of pollock and fermented celeriac will never be forgotten. We were supposed to eat there again before the end of the year, but we had to postpone a few times because we couldn’t leave the county.

Just before lockdown we had a terrific Saturday night in Liath. It had a muted atmosphere as Chef Damien Grey was resigned to it being his last service for a while and didn’t know what would happen over the next few months. But it was still great fun, and the food and wine were both superb. Liath is a restaurant with a very bright future. It is convivial and jovial with great food and service. A meal there always seems to have a personal touch and it was a perfect place for our last supper before being locked away.

I have been extremely impressed by the restaurant industry’s reaction to having their business, and with it with their livelihoods, shut down. There was very little moaning or self-pity, which would all have been understandable, but instead there was a recognition that this is bigger than them and we all have to dig in. What is more impressive is how quickly they could pivot to a takeout business, whilst keeping the quality the same, almost. We have eaten many meals at home from some of our favourite restaurants and it definitely helped us get through the year.

Grey in Liath quickly setup a take away, managing to keep the innovation and identity of his restaurant in the dishes, even though they had to be finished and plated by eejits like me. I can’t remember the amount of times we drove down to Blackrock to collect a Liath box after work on a Friday. Grey provided another highlight of the year, when in December he collaborated with sommelier Cathryn Bell Steunenberg of Wine Rover (a new curated wine service) to create a tasting menu with wine pairings. Cathryn selected the wines first and then Damien matched food to them. There was no cooking involved and it was by far the best takeout meal of our year.

People joke that if they could go back a year they would buy shares in Zoom, but I would settle for shares in smoked almonds and Nocellara olives as they appeared on so many take-home menus in 2020 – simply an observation and definitely not a complaint. One of our favourite Dublin restaurants, Etto, started doing takeout around June, as did their equally brilliant sister restaurant Uno Mas. Both of them provided us delicious meals and included some of their best dishes. Barry Sun, formally of Etto, opened Volpe Nero shortly before covid-19 struck, and he also managed to quickly pivot to a delightful take-home service with menus clearly influenced by his former employer.

One of the consistently good take-home boxes of the year was from Allta. It was always delicious and came with a carefully selected wine. And, they delivered it to our door which is a great bonus, since I now have become a reclusive, Howard Hughes like, hermit. They even supply a Spotify playlist to accompany your meal.

Our craving for Indian food was brilliantly satisfied by Millie and Santosh in 3 Leaves in Blackrock. The cooking is fantastic and the palak pakora chaat may be the most addictive thing we ate all year. China Sichuan in Sandyford, which haven’t opened at all for sit-down service since March, supplied us with some lovely Chinese food on occasion, including Emma’s “most favourite” dish of duck pancakes with hoisin sauce.

We have always tried to eat well at home and buy great produce for our cooking, but before we were restricted to only being able to shop at the weekends. In 2020 that all changed, with great shops and producers delivering.

At the end of March we went to Forest Avenue, which had rapidly changed to be a grocers. They were stocking, among other things, their own creations and McNally Farm greens, but best of all, their sourdough starter. Michelle started making bread with their starter and it is still going strong today. We have been sourcing our flour needs from Kells Wholemeal, who have a great online shop.

A couple of weeks later the deliveries started. Since April our weekly fruit and vegetable intake is supplied by Hussey’s Farm, run by Sean and Jayne Hussey. The Husseys supply us with a wide array of produce that changes every week. Having to find recipes and ways of cooking these has really helped our cooking improve over the year. Hussey Farm also have some great Irish products on their website to order. For example, we always get a carton of the amazingly versatile Velvet Cloud yoghurt each week. Another must-have from Hussey is the wildwood vinegar range, which might just be our best find of the year. Since mid-summer we have been getting the most amazing heritage potatoes from Ballymakenny Farm.

We have two suppliers for fish. Gannet Fishmongers in Galway do overnight delivery and have really good pantry items like anchovies, tuna and oils. They are great value. At the moment we are mostly using Sustainable Seafood Ireland, run by Niall Sabongi. They supply a lot of the top restaurants in the city and now they can deliver terrific seafood straight to your home. We have had some amazing seafood at home this year, to fill the void of restaurants.

The carnivore in us is placated by two suppliers also. The fantastic Higgins Butchers, who supply meat to many a great chef around the capital, have a new online shop with a very speedy delivery. They work with some great farms, including Thornhill for duck. If you want something that is not on their website they will try their best to get it for you – just ask. Village Butcher in Ranelagh are also one of the best butchers around. They work with farms such as Andarl for the most amazing pork. They also have amazing customer service and are always happy to source what is needed.  In the summer we supplemented our meat deliveries with the amazing Gubbeen, who for a time were delivering boxes of their finest meat and cheeses. After having some Achill Island Lamb in Aimsir in August, we went on to their website and ordered half a lamb, which cam butchered and ready to cook.

Our need for great Irish cheese for fulfilled by Hussey Farm, which supplies some great Irish producers such as Hegarty’s Cheddar and direct from St. Tola, who produces some of the finest goat’s cheeses you will find.

In a year of stress and confinement, the need for chocolate was ever-present. Thankfully we discovered two amazing producers in Arcane Chocolate and Bean and Goose. Both these chocolatiers will supply you with luxurious happiness that will gladden the soul. They are both a must try, trust me.

Since we have been put into lockdown and I’ve started to work from home, our wine consumption has risen, probably too much. We bought most of our wines from 64 Wine, who was our regular dealer before. It is one of the best shops around and our favourite. For wines in the twenty euro price range, they have a vast and delightful selection and are adding more wines all the time. We got one order from Greenman Wines during the year and it was a speedy delivery of some fantastic wines – we will definitely be using it again. An exciting prospect for the year ahead is Wine Rover which is run by one of the best sommeliers around, Cathryn Bell Steunenberg. She is running a curated, bespoke wine service that will deliver to your door.

We must give a mention to Gary in Imbibe Coffee, who has been kept our caffeine levels up throughout the year. Gary is passionate about coffee and it shows from the fine coffee that was delivered to our door regularly. Gary also donates a proportion of each sale to worthy chartities.
There was definitely a market for someone to setup a sort of online supermarket that would combine some of these fine products into one delivery. That is exactly what Weekl.ie is. They have setup an online business where discerning customers can fill their trolley with goods from producers like Gubbeen, St Tola, Denis Healy Farm, Sustainable Seafood Ireland, Bean and Goose, Macroom Cheese, Nutshed peanut butter, Imbibe Coffee, Mcloughlins Butchers, Regan Organic Farm. They are adding more producers all the time.
What do we look forward to in 2021? Well, Michelle has had the first of her vaccinations and I am looking forward to getting mine. We would love to get a holiday or two in this year, but will have to wait and see on that one. Food wise, we hope to improve our home cooking recipe repertoire and discover even more of Ireland’s finest producers. Hopefully post pandemic, the same shops and producers will still deliver. Above anything, we are looking forward to eating out again. There are so many Dublin restaurants that we cannot wait to get to. We only have one reservation, Aimsir in February, but that looks certain not to happen with the terrifying case numbers at the moment.

We have been lucky this year compared to what so many people have had to go through and we are very grateful for that. We are also grateful to all the fine restaurants, shops and producers in this country, we are very fortunate indeed.

You can see our full list of restaurants and suppliers we used during 2020 on our COVID-19 list.

Stay Safe!

G

Over a bottle of wine, now and again, we have a chat about what got us so obsessed with food, wine and travel. We don't come from homes or childhoods were food was celebrated and it wasn't until we after met each other, in 2002 in our first year of college at a DIT Christmas party, that we began eating out and started on the path of gastronomic intrigue. We have so many amazing memories of our gastronomic travels, but here are some of those that we regularly talk about and the sort of experiences that we are missing most at the moment.

Beach Shack In Thailand
On each of our trips to Thailand, we seek out a family-run restaurant near our hotel, which is usually right on the beachfront. On one of our first trips, we would walk down the beach from our hotel twice a day, for lunch and dinner, to this shack. It was plastic garden furniture covered in a roof of tarpaulin, with a tiny little hut in the corner for a kitchen. It was run by a really lovely family; the mother was the cook, the father would mostly by lying in a hammock and the two teenage daughters would serve the customers. Each year in the rainy season their restaurant would be destroyed by waves and then in high season they would build it again. The food was superb. For around €2 we got the most amazing pineapple curry, chilli and basil stir fry or deep-fried fish, usually a red snapper bought from the market that morning, with three-flavour sauce. Each day she would make my curry a little bit hotter, or as they said 'Thai style', to see if I could handle it. We would sit down on the beach to eat stunning Thai food, cooked by a lovely family, with a local beer, watching the waves lap in and life was pretty good.

Shrimp Cakes & Fish Amok in Phnom Penh
We fell in love with Cambodia the moment we arrived there on our honeymoon. It is a country that has had gone through recent tragic hardship, but despite being still extremely poor with very little in the way of infrastructure, there is a real sense of enthusiasm and opportunity from the friendly and hospitable locals. A five-minute walk from the hotel in the capital Phnom Penh was a restaurant called Sugar Palm. The first time we went we were the only customers and we ordered the most amazingly addictive shrimp cake; flat sheets of crunchy small shrimp, shell on, with the customary dipping sauce made with the indigenous Kampot pepper. For mains, possibly the most famous dish of Cambodia: fish amok. A steamed fish with eggs, that souffles up when cooked, served on a bed of amok leaves. The food was as amazing as the city and the people. The perfect restaurant after a sombre morning touring the Killing Fields and a terrifying trip along the bumpy roads in the back of a tuk-tuk.

Hawker Centres in Singapore
We have been to Singapore twice and each time we spent our days seeking out the best Hawker Centre. One day, we got into a taxi and told the driver to take us to his favourite hawker centre. He headed to a food hall in China Town. It was after lunchtime, so all the stalls were closing, but one still had a huge queue of around 40 people. We joined the end of it, without knowing what the stall was even selling. It turned out to be Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken Rice and Noodle which serves exactly what the name suggests. For a few euros, we got the most amazing dishes. Singapore is full of amazing hawker centres. Just ask the locals what to eat. A few months later this stall was awarded a Michelin star. 

Jetlag in Hanoi
We arrived in Hanoi late after connecting flights in London and Hong Kong. We were exhausted, especially after a hair-raising taxi ride through the streets of Hanoi to our boutique hotel in the old quarter. We threw our bags in the room and went straight up to the restaurant on the top floor and took a seat overlooking the city. This wasn't a chain hotel so the food was local and cooked by locals. We had bun-cha and pho, with 2 local beers, and it was restorative. invigorating and delicious. The perfect introduction to our time in Hanoi. They also gave us a bottle of Vietnamese red wine in our room, it was a Bordeaux blend, and it was truly terrible, but you don't go to Vietnam for wine.

Noma Perfection
We have written many times here about our love of Noma and the fantastic experiences we had there, so we won't bore with it again. 
All there is to say is that Noma gave us the best two food experiences of our lives, they were flawless. We will never forget them and we will never stop talking about them. The perfect restaurant in our book. See our thoughts on Noma here.

The Humble Brasserie in France
We have had some amazing and memorable meals in France in high-end establishments, places like Arpege in Paris which served us a 16-course lunch without any meat or fish - it was superb and the cooking was masterful. But we still talk about a little brasserie in Bordeaux called Du Loup. This place doesn't have any stars, or bibs, or accolades and I would doubt you would find it in any guide. It was (it has since got a refurbishment) just a simple old fashioned brasserie with a menu du jour. The food was excellent: pink lamb cutlets with dauphinoise, strawberry tart, some local cheese, ile flottantes. Three courses of classic French dishes. It was full of locals on their lunch break enjoying a quick lunch and a bottle of wine. We got a decent bottle of cru bourgeois (which was served in a decanter that we couldn't pour without it spilling all over the table, much to the amusement of our server and the chef) and relaxed for a lovely lunch with simple French fare. 
​
First London Trip
Our first trip to London had a rather stressful beginning. Because of heavy snow, our flight was cancelled and we were hastily put onto an earlier flight that was leaving just a few minutes after we arrived at the airport. After sprinting through the airport, we just made it on, then the plane waited for 2 hours on the tarmac, got de-iced three times and it took off just before they closed the airport. Oh, and when we got to Heathrow we discovered that our luggage didn't make the journey with us. Worse than that we only had around 40 minutes to get from the airport to The Dorchester for a lunch reservation at Alain Ducasse, so we had to go straight there. But we had an excellent lunch, with three beautiful courses and terrific wine pairings. (It was such a nice experience we went back a few years later, but sadly on that occasion it was terrible). The next day, still wearing the same clothes as our luggage was still en-route, we went to Gordon Ramsay Royal Hospital Road for lunch. It was snowing again when we got in but were given a fantastic amuse bouche of langoustine in a ginger consomme to warm us up. A quail pithivier was another amazing highlight of what was a fantastic lunch with first-class service, cooked by Clare Smyth, who is one of the best chefs cooking anywhere at the moment. We ended our trip the next day with lunch in Marcus Wareing and the best part of this meal with a grouse dish that we will never forget that we ate while watching the snowfall outside. 

Bodega 1900, Barcelona
We go to Barcelona quite a bit and we will always visit at least one Albert Adria restaurant as he is undoubtedly one of the best chefs in the world and everything he does is just magic. We have been to the ridiculously fun Tickets a couple of times and to the brilliant Enigma, which serves over 40 courses in five different rooms. But there is one Adria restaurant that we will always go back to every time we go to Barcelona. After we book the flights, the next to do is book a table at Bodega 1900. The first time we went there we didn't know to expect. We knew it was going to be the most laid back and some may say the least creative of the Adria restaurants. However, it was unforgettable. We were told by our server that we could order off the menu or just let them bring a selection of their best and seasonal dishes, which is what we did. For the next two hours, we had around fifteen delightful dishes. The thing about Bodega 1900 is that you will get traditional servings like tomato bread or some clams in vinegar, but it is the best tomato bread and the best clams you will have ever had. If you love food, you could not help but love this place. The produce is second to none and it is prepared with great skill. Our three-year-old Emma loved it last time we went and scoffed all her meatballs. It is one of our favourite restaurants in the world and is our first stop on every visit to Barcelona. It is the sort of food you crave every day.

​Sea Urchin in Sorrento
Sorrento is beautiful but it is full of tour groups sheepishly following a tour guide into terrible "tourist-menu" restaurants. But there are some gems. In the old port there is a restaurant called Bagni Delfino and it so marvellous we went several times during our week on the Amalfi coast. The restaurants juts out into sea - on one side you can see Mount Vesuvius in the distance and on the other the colourful old fishing port. The food was simple, but just perfect. The dish that will always stick in my mind was spaghetti with sea urchin. Emma, 11 months old at the time, went crazy for it and our favourite photo from that holiday is her with a sea urchin sauce all over her smiling face.

San Sebastian Pilgrimage 
We try to go to San Sebastian every spring (we missed it last year because we were buying a house and COVID-19 has cancelled our trip this year). It is almost a cliche to say that San Sebastian is a food Mecca, but it is. The standard of food is insanely good from most of the pintxos bar and quite cheap too. Even the wine lists are top quality in many of the bars now. Our first trip there started with a little bit of disappointment. We arrived late into the city and went to the first pintxos bar we came across which turned out to be one of the few terrible ones. We should have known because there were absolutely no locals in there at all, which is never a good sign. The next day we had a fabulously unforgettable meal in Arzak and they gave us a printed guide to the best pintxo bars in the town, so we were sorted. The rest of the week we had a wonderful time going from bar to bar, having a little bit in each of them and moving on. Since then, each time we go away we have been building up a list of the best places to eat. In San Sebastian, you can spend a lot of money in some of the world's best restaurants, like Arzak, but if you stick to the pintxo bars, it can be quite cheap to eat and drink your way through a day. The city is relaxed, there are no stag or hen parties, no drunk eejits, the pace of life is slow, so it is the perfect places to relax for a week or two. One of our best trips there was our first with six-month-old Emma. She ate and loved every bit of food we gave her, from kokotxhas to sweetbreads, to urchin. She went the whole seven days without crying once. See our guide to San Sebastian.

Engagement In Paris
We got engaged in Paris in 2012, with a proposal in Montmartre, overlooking the city (I know I am very romantic, right?). That lunchtime we went to a simple brasserie for moules frites. The next day we went to an outdoor market near Bastille and got a baguette, 24-month-aged comte and a nice bottle of Bordeaux. We sat in our rented apartment near Gare du Nord, ate and drank while watching TV and it was perfect.

Koffmann's in the Storm
We had been for lunch in L'Atelier du Joel Robuchon and, despite losing their 2nd star just a few days earlier, it was an excellent meal with superb wine pairings. After lunch, we were walking through Knightsbridge and decided to call into Koffmanns, which was in the Berkeley Hotel, and book a late supper for that night. That evening, there was a biblical storm with torrential rain and gale-force winds. There were warnings on the news to not go out. But, we ran out to a taxi and went to Koffmann's. We were going down Park Lane and the roads were empty, which was a bit eerie. We were the only guests in the restaurant, everyone else had cancelled. We had a three-course meal that included red leg partridge with cabbage and apple tart. It was classical French dishes and it was a perfect supper.

Ischia on the pier
In 2015 we went to Ischia for a few days to stay in a fancy spa hotel - this was before we had children when we allowed to stay in such places. Each day we used to go into the main town and walk down the pier to the last restaurant, get a table outside overlooking the water and eat classical dishes of the region. Ceps were in season and we can remember a simple cep and pasta dish that was delightful. But the dish that lives the most in the memory is spaghetti vongole. This is a simple dish, only a few ingredients, but when its right it is just perfect. Eating this, sipping a glass of local wine, watching the boats come in and out, was just magical. On another night we went to this tiny, local restaurant near our hotel called Cantinando, which was run by a young couple. Our host told us the specials of the day from ingredients they got from the market that morning, so we went with them. We had the famous dish of the island, rabbit cooked in wine and another dish of paccheri pasta with boar. Just brilliant.

G

It is two years since I heard the news of Anthony Bourdain's death by suicide. I was walking down by the Dodder river in Milltown on a lunch break with a work colleague when Michelle text me with the news. I always found it sort of odd when people would get upset about the death of a celebrity that they didn't at all know and who they had never met, but this one affected me in a way that I wouldn't have thought possible.

Perhaps, it was because I was going through my own battle with mental illness at the time - a battle that would last more than 18 months. So, I was extra sensitive to any news about suicide or mental health because, despite knowing how debilitating any mental health issue can be, and knowing how it can quickly swallow everything around you, it still scared me when reminded that some people see no other way out and not only thought they would be better off out of the world but that the world would be better off without them in it. It was even worse to hear this news about someone I admired, a person who influenced my life, that I felt had a similar outlook to me on things I hold dear, and who I thought had put the worst of his demons behind him. A ridiculous thing to think, as it can be hard enough to spot mental health issues in the people in your life, never mind a presenter on the television, but I suppose I wanted to think it was possible to put issues in the past. 

But it was more than my state of mind at play. Michelle, who thankfully does not suffer from any mental illness, felt the loss too. For months after she couldn't bring herself to watch any of his shows and even when we watch them now, it is with a sense of sadness. For more than a decade we watched Bourdain's travel shows and admired them for the realistic depictions of the destination, for their rawness. They were different from every other food travel show on television and his sudden death left a void that we cannot see any other presenter filling. 

There are many chefs, past and present, on TV who do travel shows and we enjoy watching them too, but they nearly always seem like some tourist board commercial designed to depict the country in the best light with beautiful post-card-worthy shots of the main tourist attractions. Most of the time, they give the sense of being an advertisement for the accompanying cookbook. In most of these shows, you will see a local in whatever destination, sometimes a chef, cooking a dish of the region that they have perfected over years, but then you have to watch the presenter try to cook the dish themselves, almost always doing a worse job, but of course, the recipe will be available in the cookbook. Rarely is the viewer shown the link between the food and the culture and history of a region.

Bourdain's shows were not there to sell the destination to the viewer, we certainly didn't watch the Iceland show from No Reservations, or Kyiv from Part's Unknown and think we must go there. The shows were not designed to let everyone know how much of gourmet he was, he very rarely talked about himself and seemed to endeavour to present the show with humility and humour - he was always gracious to his host and respectful of the local people and culture. He was not trying to sell a cookbook, he wanted the cooking of the locals to be front and centre. Instead, most episodes of his shows brilliantly capture the link between food and community, food and culture and food and history. He uses food as a catalyst of conversation to understand the country. His shows will give the viewer a sense of the country's past and present told through food.

The one thing that always stood out to me when watching Bourdain's shows is that he understood the power of the dining table. It is where conversations and debates happen, about politics, work, life, sport, and even food. It brings families together, it brings communities together and can even bring people of different backgrounds, different persuasions, different ethnicity together, because when you sit down to eat with someone, you already share something, you are sharing food. The dining table breaks down barriers, it opens people up and it can make family bonds stronger and bring strangers together. In so many of Bourdain's shows you will see him learning about a region from locals over a meal and people will just open up to him, even in countries where speaking out is not the done thing. Rarely in other food and travel shows is the viewer shown a link between food and the history and culture of a region.

When we travel we use food as our way into learning about a region's culture, for us food is as important as literature, art, music or politics in getting to know a country. Food is really the main reason we travel, along with wine of course. Before we travel, we spend weeks planning our meals, researching the best food markets and the must-try dishes in the region. We do try to eat our way around a destination. 

Maybe what we related to most about Bourdain was his appreciation for food at all levels. Michelle and I, usually over a glass (bottle) or two (three) of wine, often reminisce on our best food memories from our travels and these memories vary from the expensive, the cheap, the innovative, the simple, the traditional and the modern. We have had some of the most memorable meals of our life in the dining rooms of the world's most innovative and influential kitchens, such as Noma, Arzak, Osteria Fransesca, Enigma, Eleven Madison Park, Tickets. But, many of our food memories are far more simple affairs; eating spaghetti vongole on a pier in Ischia watching the boats come in and out, oysters in a market in Lyon, the most amazing deep-fried red snapper in three-flavour-sauce in a beach hut in Thailand, shrimp cakes and fish amok near our hotel in Phnom Penh, cachio e pepe in a trattoria in Rome, chicken and rice in a Singapore hawker centre, pinxtos in San Sebastian, lamb cutlets with potato dauphinoise in a brasserie in Bordeaux. When we travel we try to incorporate all levels of cooking for that region. We want to be able to taste the region, in that time and in that place.

You sometimes hear chefs or food writers dismiss high-end dining or innovation in favour of the classical, or visa-versa, but Bourdain knew there was a place for cooking of all levels and styles. He adored street food and he had his favourite vendors he visited all over the world, he loved eating a meal in someone's home, but he also loved and respected the avant-garde. He visited Arzak regularly and considered Juan-Marie Arzak to be like a father to him, he travelled the world with Eric Ripart of Le Bernadin. He went to elBulli sceptical of what he had heard, but left amazed and became a close friend of Ferran Adria. The same happened to him when he went to Noma to the extent that a whole episode of Part's Unknown was dedicated to Rene Redzepi. Bourdain, like us, had an appreciation for all food, as long as it was delicious.

Bourdain liked to celebrate people in the food industry. He dedicated a show to Ferran Adria, another to Paul Bocuse and another to Rene Redzepi, and more than a few times he mentions his love and admiration of Fergus Henderson, but in his book Medium Raw, a follow up to Kitchen Confidential, he dedicated a whole chapter to Justo Thomas, the fish butcher in the 3 Michelin star restaurant Le Bernadin in New York. Thomas, it is said, can expertly and perfectly butcher 700 pounds every day - it is a fascinating read. Bourdain knew that without people like Thomas the industry would grind to a halt. They are the backbone, the engine room, that keep the whole show running. In many of his shows he will focus on a street food vendor, or a food producer, or someone cooking in their home.

Parts Unknown is now available on Netflix UK & Ireland and we are enjoying watching them again, although it just makes us long to travel again. The shows still inspire us to travel and eat as well as we can. Food and travel is a huge part of our lives, and as a consequence will be a huge part of our children's lives and Anthony Bourdain was a big influence on that.

I won't forget the day when I heard Bourdain had ended his own life. I was having one of my better days during a tough period, but the news was a temporary setback. But food to me is a celebration of life, of humankind's beauty and innovation and is a tremendous source of pleasure. Bourdain will live on through his books and his shows and hopefully continue to inspire people to travel and eat, and then travel and eat some more.

But if you are going through a hard time, and desperate, know that help is available and things do get better, sometimes when you least expect it.

G

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Services that can help you through a difficult time:
https://spunout.ie/opinion/article/13-services-that-can-support-you-through-a-mental-health-difficulty

We keep a sort of league table of the best restaurants we have been to on our travels around the world. For the past six years, we have had Copenhagen's Noma on the top, with an almost faultless score of 98 out of 100. We ate there three times between 2014 and 2015 and two of those meals were the best of our life. We would never say that Noma is the best restaurant in the world or that everyone who eats there should feel the same, but it was the best experience for us. Food is highly subjective and each person will have different criteria for what is their best restaurant. 

There are many reasons why Noma is top of our list. The service on each occasion, led by Aussie James Spreadbury, was fantastic, managing to be both professional and fun. The dining room was (it has since moved to a new location) comfortable and aesthetically pleasing. The ambience and atmosphere were just what you want in a restaurant like this. All this is essential to contribute to the perfect dining experience.  But, there are a  few things that set Noma apart from the other great restaurants on our list. 

Firstly, and obviously, is the food. We like food that can be innovative, original, seasonal, local and yet show clarity, we love to be able to identify the components that make up a dish. While a restaurant like El Cellar de Can Roca shows outstanding mastery in blending many different and unusual ingredients to compose a final dish that is delicious and harmonious, it sometimes is hard to identify the individual flavours. In Noma, you not only can taste each part of the dish, but you feel you like you can taste a season, the weather and the region that went into making it. Noma takes a snapshot of the season and serves it on a plate. 

Secondly, it is the memories. We have had excellent meals in other restaurants, but shortly after you leave, maybe on the flight home, it is a struggle to remember the dishes. We can still remember nearly every dish we were served in Noma, despite it being nearly five years ago. Not only do we remember what it looked like, but we remember the taste and way we felt eating it. In Noma, there were many special, unforgettable dishes. The sort of dishes that we didn't even talk about whilst eating, but instead just luxuriated in it in silence. It isn't just high-end dining that has given us these memorable food experiences. We get peeved sometimes when people say they only like classical french, or they don't like formal dining, or they don't like Michelin starred restaurants, or they only want to eat a certain genre of food. Why make a choice? Isn't it great that you can have it all? Of course, we have had unforgettable experiences in the halls of the great chefs, but also in classical french bistros, in beach bars in Thailand eating the food of a local family, eating chilli crab in the hawker centres of Singapore, vongole on the pier in Ischia watching the fishing boats come in, a great pizza in New York, having tomatoes with olive oil in a stripped-down tapas bar in Barcelona, prawns simply cooked on a plancha in San Sebastian. The magic of dining for us is that we can have all these different experiences, whatever we are in the mood of, and we don't have to pigeon-hole ourselves into one genre. 

Lastly, is something hard to quantify. It is a sort of energy in the restaurant that is very hard to articulate. Maybe it is the enthusiasm of the staff, a sense of passion from both the kitchen and front-of-house teams - a pride and love of what they are doing. A feeling you get that this isn't just a job for them, but they are excited to come into work each day and have a true love for what they are doing. Maybe it is also a special sort of hospitality that isn't just being welcoming, but more a feeling that they are inviting you into their house and they are going to do everything possible to make your experience as brilliant as possible and for the three or four hours that you are there your troubles will be forgotten. We have spoken here before how we nearly cancelled one trip to Noma as we had just received devastating news about the health of a family member hours before getting on the flight. But we went and for the four hours in Noma we were taken away from our troubles, and it this power that good food can have that makes us love it so much.

It is rare when everything comes together in a restaurant like this. It is why we travel to seek out the best dining experiences and often restaurants can be quite brilliant, but they are missing that something that makes it extra special and memorable. But twice in the last eight months, we had an experience like this and we only have to travel as far as Celbridge.

We first ate in Aimsir last August and had no real expectations, we hadn't eaten in Maaemo, the Oslo restaurant where Cornish chef Jordan Bailey was the head chef before moving to Ireland, but as soon as we walked in we got the sense that this could be something a bit special. And it was. It was brilliant; the food, the hospitality, the wine, the sommelier, the dining room. So, last week we returned in the hope that it would be as good as we remembered, but this time it was even better.

Again, when we walked into the restaurant we picked up a vibe off the staff that they are excited to be part of this project. When we were taken from our seat in the bar through to the restaurant, we were shown some of the offerings of the season in their dry ageing fridge; charcuterie that isn't quite ready for the menu and some aged venison that was in store for us later in the evening. This managed to heighten our expectations even higher.

The food, around 18 courses of it, is seasonal, local (some even from their own gardens), innovative, original and much of it was definitely memorable. As we said above we do have a penchant for restaurants that can present the landscape and the season on a plate, it is a style of food we can really identify with, and Aimsir definitely fulfils this wish.

On our first visit last August, we had the most amazing Heritage Wheat Soda Bread, so we were a bit disappointed to hear the bread had changed because the cream they used to make it was out of season, but it was replaced with a sort of sourdough bread made with Jerusalem artichoke that was just as good, The Dexter beef tartare served in its own tripe was still on the menu though, and was just as good this time. Irish bluefin tuna belly, which was dry-aged in bees' wax served in a vertebra from the tuna with mushroom soy and honey was remarkable and extremely moreish. Dry-aged halibut, which we were also introduced to on the way in, was beautifully cooked on the bone with confit garlic butter, served with possibly the best, most addictive, sauce we have ever had with fish. Another amazing dish was organic onion steamed in roasted bone marrow and filled with sheeps' yogurt and ramson capers.. To finish the savoury courses were two courses served with the venison we had met earlier in the evening. First smoked heart served on puffed tendon with burnt chive emulsion, followed by a dish of Sika deer cooked over hot embers with marrow and vinegar.

The best dish of the night was a dessert and it is not often we say that about a meal. A serving of pumpkin with salted rapeseed ice-cream and pumpkin seed brittle was remarkable; just the right level of sweetness, textured and perfectly balanced. It was an  unforgettable dish. Michelle has been talking about the Koji tart since our visit last August and was delighted to see that it is still on the menu - it is extremely decadent and a nice ending to the meal. Recently we compiled an Irish tasting menu of the last decade and Aimsir featured heavily - we would expect this showing again in ten years time when we make our tasting menu for this decade.

Restaurant manager and Maitre'D Majken Bech Bailey commands her dining room with poise, grace, charm, friendliness and wit. She strikes the perfect balance between professionalism and hospitality like very few Maitre'Ds we have ever seen and this transcends the whole front of house team who deliver an evening of faultless service. Michelle, because she is still feeding four-month-old Amy, didn't want the full wine pairings so asked could she have fewer wines. This was not only accommodated with ease, but Michelle got some different wines than those on the wine pairing, so we could try more off their list. 

That brings us nicely to the wine. We have all had experiences listening to a sommelier rattle off some over-rehearsed speech about a wine with no enthusiasm while you sit there bored wondering when it will end. Well, this isn't the case in Aimsir. Sommelier Cathryn Steunenberg presents each wine with infectious enthusiasm and it is obvious that each one is personally selected by her and means something to her. After each wine, you look forward to the next and hearing the story about its origins. The wines themselves were all excellently matched to the food. Starting with a very interesting wine, Agostado from Bodega Cota 45, that tasted like a blend of a Palo Cortado sherry and one of the wineries other wines, UBE. It was extremely unique and went perfectly with the first couple of courses. Another unusual wine was a Soave from Noûs Cooperativa that didn't taste like any other Soave we had before. One of the stars of the night was Maximus, an IGP made from a grape we had never heard of, Fer Servadou, which had great acidity, with red fruit and hints of pepper. Another gem was a Brouilly from Pierre Cotton in Beaujolais, which was very easy to drink and had a distinctive earthy taste and almost bacony nose. Cathryn doesn't just pair the food with wine, the bread was matched brilliantly with a red ale from the Kildare Brewing Company and dessert was paired with an apple ice wine from  Killahora Orchards in Cork which was splendid. 

Aimsir is truly a world-class dining destination and we are very lucky to have it just outside Dublin. In Aimsir they consider the whole experience; the food, the wine, the service, the dinnerware, the setting and they try to perfect each of these to give an unforgettable dining experience. Maybe, what is most exciting about Aimsir is that they are only open less than a year, so it is reasonable to expect that there is still better to come, especially since they haven't fully reaped the rewards of their kitchen garden yet. We were in Aimsir for nearly 4 hours, but it felt like we there for just a few minutes.

We would never support the World's Best 50 List at all, it is nonsense to suggest that there is a 'best' restaurant in the world, but until recently the idea that Ireland would have a restaurant good enough to be in the best 50 in the world seemed absurd to us. But now, with Liath in Blackrock making great strides and continuing to improve in the last couple of years and now Aimsir, Ireland has two restaurants that can really rival the best on a world stage.

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The Irish food has come such a long way in the last 10 years and we have been lucky enough to eat in some of the best restaurants during that time. We looked through old menus and reviews to come up with our own tasting menu of the best dishes we have had in Ireland over the last 10 years. This menu is a bit heavy on meat and you would probably need to have a very large appetite to eat it all, but it would definitely be worth trying.

Heritage Wheat Soda Bread & Butter
Aimsir, Kildare (2019)

Violetta Potato, Cheese, Black Garlic
Aimsir, Kildare (2019)

Cod & Kamebishi
Amuse, Dublin (2016 - Now Closed)

Crab, Fermented Pea, Crab Shell Butter, Peas
Aimsir, Kildare (2019)

Saltee Island and Bere Island Scallop
Thorntons, Dublin (2015 - Now Closed)

Foie Gras Royale
The Greenhouse, Dublin (2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018)

Chicken in 2 Parts: Chicken Heart and Chicken in Brown Butter And Miso
Aimsir, Kildare (2019)

Quail, Fermented Barley and Black Pudding
L'Ecrivain, Dublin (2015)

Venison Rolled in Ash, Beetroot & Blackberries
L'ecrivain, Dublin (2015)

Veal Sweatbreads
The Greenhouse, Dublin (2018)

Lamb, Squash, Preserved Tomato
Heron & Gray, Dublin (2017)

Beef, Sandwort, Kelp
Liath, Dublin (2019)

Woodcock and Barley
Aniar, Galway (2015)

Whiskey & Hay Ice Cream, Loam
Loam, Galway (2015)

Coffee Ice Cream with Chocolate and Toasted Barley
Nede, Dublin (2013 - Now Closed)

Lemon Cream Parfait and Bay Leaf Ice Cream
Mulberry Garden, Dublin (2014)

Toasted Koji Tart
Aimsir, Kildare (2019)

A Taste Of The Landscape
Aimsir, Kildare (2019)

We have been lucky enough to have eaten in some of the world's best restaurants over the last decade. We have so many amazing memories of dishes that were simple amazing and unforgettable. We have compiled our tasting menu of the best dishes from our travels in the last decade.

Around The World Snacks
El Celler de Can Roca, Girona (2015)

Bread & Butter
Noma, Copenhagen (2014, 2015)

Vegetable Flower
Noma, Copenhagen (2015)

Three Flavour Corn Ice Cream
El Celler de Can Roca, Girona (2015)

Green Shoots Of The Season With Scallop Marinade
Noma, Copenhagen (2015)

Lobster with Bee Pollen
Arzak, Copenhagen (2016)

Shrimp Wrapped In Nasturtium Leaves
Noma, Copenhagen (2014)

Pumpkin Consomme, Pumpkin Gel, Provolone Tortellini 
Indaco, Ischia (2015)

Abstract of Asparagus, Prosciutto and Peas Tagliolini
Osteria Francescana, Modena (2015)

Blood Pudding with Braeburn Apple and Whiskey
The Clove Club, London (2014)

Foie Gras with Green Sauce
Arzak, San Sebastian (2018)

Duck and Lavender
Eleven Madison Park, New York (2013)

Gammel Dansk,
Noma, Copenhagen (2014)

Sourdough Ice Cream with a Vinegar Meringue
El Cellar de Can Roca, Girona (2015)

Apple and Mushroom
Ralea, Copenhagen (2015)

Botrytis Cinerea
The Fat Duck. Bray (2013)

Petit Fours: Seven Deadly Sins 
Mugaritz, San Sebastian (2015)

We have been lucky enough to eat at some of the world's best restaurants over the last decade. This has curtailed slightly since we had two young girls to look after, but we still try to get in a couple of holidays a year, arrange a babysitter and find the best places to eat. These are the Greedy Awards for the highlights of the last decade for us.

Best Restaurant:    Noma, Copenhagen
We have eaten at Noma three times and two of the meals are the two best meals of our lives. Everything was flawless: the food amazing, the service perfect, the setting exquisite. On one occasion we had just received some devastating news about the health of a family member before travelling to Copenhagen. We considered not going at all. But in the end we went and for the four hours we were in Noma, our troubles drifted away as we were adsorbed into the magical world that only food and can take us to. Noma is the most influential restaurant of the last decade and their ethos has had reverberations at nearly all levels of cooking. Noma's stature in the industry was considerably helped by coming first in the Worlds Best 50 restaurant awards several times. A silly awards of course for something as subjective as food and tastes, but to us Noma was the best and on two occasions we were blown away. We haven't been to Noma 2,0 yet, but can't wait.

Best Service:    Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, London
This was a close call between Noma and Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, both of which we ate in three times during the decade. But Ramsay's has one thing that Noma doesn't have and that is the amazing Maitre d', Jean-Claude Breton. Jean-Claude is a class-act, a gentleman who greets each guest like an old friend and commands the dining room with grace and aplomb. He is the Maitre d' by which all others should be judged. 

Best Wine:    Arzak, San Sebastian
We have eaten in Arzak on each of our annual visits to San Sebastian. The food is magnificent, the service excellent and the wine list inspiring. On our first visit, we asked the sommelier about a wine that was around, if memory serves us right, €80 and he suggested an alternative wine, which he insisted was a similar style, but better, for around €45. This tells you everything you need to know about the wine service in Arzak. Another fantastic wine list was in El Cellar de Can Roca in Girona which has great value wines served by a sommelier (who happens to be Josep Roca) whose life passion is wine. The best wine flight we had in the decade was probably in Le Chateaubriand in Paris.

Best Dish:    Shrimp Wrapped In Nasturtium Leaves, Noma
We have had so many great dishes over the last ten years, but a few them stand out in our memory. Every so often we get a dish that is so good that we don't even speak to each other when we eat. We just look at each other and we both know that we are eating one of those special dishes that doesn't come around very often. Abstract of Asparagus, Prosciutto and Peas Tagliolini in Osteria Francescana in Modena was on of those dishes, complex but balanced. Foie Gras with Green Sauce in Arzak was another perfect dish and one we won't quickly forget. Noma provided a few candidates for this award: Vegetable Flower; Green Shoots of the Season with Scallop Marinade; Gameldansk. But the dish that we will always think of is Sweet Shrimp Wrapped in Nasturtium Leaves, which was so beautiful, served in a clear and delicate sauce of beetroot root, that it just blew us away. We still think about that dish, a lot.

Best Chef:    Albert Adria
We could have gone with a few different great chefs here. The brilliant Rene Redzepi, the most influential chef of the decade, would have been an obvious choice. Clare Smyth who cooks with an angelic touch and steely precision. But, we pick Albert Adria, whose brilliance sometimes doesn't get the recognition it deserves. Each one of his restaurants in Barcelona that we have eaten has been amazing. From Bodega 1900, a restaurant which we would never go to Barcelona without visiting, even with the kids. To Tickets, which is outrageous fun and the food sublime. We were even lucky enough to get an early reservation in Enigma - a fantastic restaurant which serves over 40 courses to diners as they move between 5 different rooms. It is also a common sight to see Albert Adria cooking in his restaurants or checking in on each of them during service. There are a lot of reasons to visit Barcelona, but Albert Adria should be your main one. Everything this man touches is just magic. 

Best Value:    Dinner by Heston, London
There were a lot of good value restaurants. The number of courses and the affordability of the wine list would put El Cellar de Can Roca inline for this one, but the lunch we had in Dinner by Heston in Knightsbridge in London was amazing value at the time at only £25 per person. The quality of the food was exceptional. 
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Best Meal:    Noma, Copenhagen
This is an easy one. The best meal we ever had was Noma in November 2014. Everything was perfect: the service, the dining room, the ambience, and above all the food. On our flight home from our jaunts abroad, we sometimes go through the menu and rate each dish out of 10. On the way we back from Noma on this occasion we gave around 12 dishes out of the 18, 10 our of 10. These are dishes that we will never forget and it was four hours that we will never forget from a groundbreaking restaurant. 

Best Casual Dining:      Bodega 1900, Barcelona
Every time we visit Barcelona our first stop is always to Bodega 1900. Part of the Albert Adria restaurant group, its is a stripped back bodega style dining room serving the best tapas dishes you will find anywhere. Don't ask for a menu, instead the chef can choose the best selection on that day and you will get nearly 20 dishes, some from the menu and some specials, showcasing amazing Catalan produce. There are the classic staples like tomato bread, but also expect to eat oysters, sea urchin and the desserts are also amazing. Bodega 1900 is a very happy place for us.

Most Childish Fun:        The Fat Duck, Bray
This could have easily been a three way tie between Tickets and Enigma, both in Barcelona, and The Fat Duck. Tickets is superb fun, from the service to the decor to the dessert room. Enigma is something even more special. After putting in your secret code, that is emailed to you beforehand, to an unmarked door, you will be served over 40 dishes across five different rooms, each dish is pure Adria magic. However, the prize for most fun must go to The Fat Duck again. From the video you are sent after you make a reservation that will fill you childhood wonder, to the elaborate 'Alice in Wonderland' dish to the 'Kid in a sweatshop' finale, The Fat Duck will capture your imagination as you giddily wait for each dish to come out.  It is hard to get a reservation, is expensive, but it is worth going.

Best Irish Restaurant:        Aimsir, Celbridge
Coming in right at the end of the decade is Aimsir in Celbridge, the best restaurant we have eaten in Ireland. Irish food has progressed immeasurably over the last 10 years but was still crying out for an innovative restaurant that could compete on a world stage with the best. Liath in Blackrock has been making strides towards this, but our meal in Aimsir was the first time we thought that we were eating in a restaurant that we would make a special trip abroad to. The service led by Majken was flawless, managing to be formal, but still engaging and really good fun. The wine pairings were excellent and each introduced engagingly. And, of course, the food, from a kitchen led by Jordan Bailey, formally of Maaemo, was exciting, interesting, clever and most of all delicious. It is truly a world-class restaurant and we are proud that it is in Ireland.
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Unfortunately, not all our meals out in the last decade lived up to expectation and some were a downright waste of money and left us feeling bereft, so we may as well mention them too.

Biggest Disappointment:     Restaurant Paul Bocuse, Collonges-au-Mont-d'Or
A few years ago we travelled down the length of France, actually starting in Cologne and finishing in Barcelona. One of the stops was 4 nights in Lyon. We fell in love with the city and ate some amazing food, but our visit to the legendary Restaurant Paul Bocuse was not a highlight of this trip. The service was awful, with the front of house team giving the impression of being bored and uninterested, possibly because they have been serving the same dishes every day for the last 30 years. From the unfriendly welcome at the door, to forgetting wine pairings, to shoulders being shrugged when we asked any questions. The food was good, but not spectacular, with the desserts being a major let down; served off a trolley each one was no better than you can buy in a patisserie in the city centre. And it cost over €600 too!!
Another disappointment was Daniel in New York, who served us under-cooked fish in a stuffy environment. In Ireland, Chapter One was always a let down on each occasion that we ate there, leathery overcooked venison, plastic in our food and hoovering around our feet while we were still eating are just a few of our great memories from different meals there.

Worst Dish:     Green Slime in Mugaritz, San Sebastian
There is only one dish we could give this to and it is one we will never forget. We don't remember what it was called or what was actually in it but think of licking Slimer out of Ghostbusters and you might get some idea of what we are talking about. Mugaritz, while providing us with some great dishes, also served us some that were just bizarre or downright wrong. On arrival we were brought into the kitchen where the head chef told us that he hadn't tried some of the dishes on the menu because they were too new - this set up alarm bells straight away. It seemed to us a restaurant that was led by technique and innovation and not on taste or flavour. A restaurant that was led by kitchen advances more than the wants of the diner. And the "Slimer" dish served as a perfect example of this. They told us it was a new technique of some sorts to generate this slime. Who cares what the technology is when the dish is truly repulsive.