After putting out our shortlist last week, which you can see here, we have finally agreed on the winners of the The Greedy Awards 2015. Oh and a big thank you for reading our ramblings over the last year.
 
Best Service
Ireland: Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud, Dublin
World: Noma, Copenhagen
 
Mulberry Garden and Campagne both have a charming and hospitable front of house team, but Restaurant Patrick Guildbaud adds a fantastic attention to detail. Restaurant Gordon Ramsay and Lasarte both had flawless service, but Noma has this plus a personal touch that manages to keep a slight neighbourhood feel to it.
  
Best Value
Ireland: Forest Avenue, Dublin
World: Le Chateaubriand. Paris
 
Amuse’s lunch menu is particularly good value, as is Loam’s dinner menu, but Forest Avenue felt like a bargain for the quality of food. El Cellar de Can Roca is built on generosity, and has some great wines for a very reasonable price, that makes you feel that the price is more than worth it. Relae is one of the best priced meals in a very expensive city, but €70 for the standard of food in Le Chateaubriand in Paris is just superb.
 
Best Casual Dining
Ireland: ETTO, Dublin
World: Bodega 1900, Barcelona
 
Pichet and Soder+KO both serve excellent food, but ETTO matches great no nonsense cookery with a charm and friendliness at an excellent price. Cantinando on the island of Ischia is a tiny place with a tiny menu, serving some great local food cooked with passion. Cocottes by Christian Constant in Paris is great value and quite delicious, but Albert Adria’s Bodega 1900 could be easily included in the best restaurant category it is that good.
 
Best Wine
Ireland: Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud, Dublin
World: El Cellar de Can Roca, Girona
 
The wine pairings in both Forest Avenue and Loam were well matched, but Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud, whist being a bit harder on the pocket, served some exquisite wines. Le Chateaubriand served some very interesting and unusual wines that were nearly as good as the food. Arzak and El Cellar de Can Roca showed that you can still go to of the world’s top restaurant and get a great local wine for a very low price.
 
Best Meal
Ireland: Aniar, Galway
World: Noma, Copenhagen
 
Loam, L’Ecrivain and Amuse all served up some great meals this year and would be worthy winners, but the ten course tasting menu in Aniar was the best and most polished meal we had in Ireland this year. We have been very lucky to eat in some amazing restaurants abroad this year, but for the second year in a row Noma delivered an almost flawless meal and gets the vote again, despite some stiff competition from the brilliant Osteria Fransescana, Arzak, L’Arpege and The Clove Club.
 
Best Dish
Ireland: Quail, Fermented Barley and Black Pudding, L’Ecrivain
World: Abstract of Asparagus, Prosciutto and Peas Tagliolini, Osteria Francescana
 
It was extremely hard to pick a shortlist for this one, never mind pick a winner, but we just thought if you could only have two dishes again, which two would we pick. The quail, barley and black pudding in L’Ecrivain was superb whilst the tagliolini in Osteria Francescana​ was complex but perfectly balanced.
 
Best Chef
Ireland: Conor Dempsey, Amuse
World: Rene Redzepi, Noma
 
This was the hardest category to pick a winner in Ireland, with all four chefs cooking some great food this year. But the nod goes to Conor Dempsey who is cooking some interesting food, balancing and combining big flavours, while showing some excellent meat and fish cookery. He has progressed Amuse impressively in 2015. Rene Redzepi, still with a hands on influence in Noma, has never let the restaurant rest on its laurels and still managing to run a kitchen that produced the best meal of 2015 for us.
 
Best Restaurant
Ireland: Aniar, Galway
World: Noma, Copenhagen
 
Again another difficult decision for Ireland, but at the end of the day Aniar served us up our best meal in Ireland this year and we think if we had to go one of the restaurants tonight for dinner Aniar would be it. We sometimes get criticised for our praise of Noma, mostly by people who have never actually eaten there, but for us they get everything right, from the stunning food, to the service, the staff and the dining room – if we could have one last ever meal it would be in Noma.

​​We have been lucky enough to have eaten some fantastic meals in 2015, both at home and abroad. For our end of year Greedy Awards, we have been looking back at our meals this year and have drawn up the shortlist below. The winners will be from this list.

​As we come to the end of the year it is time to wrap up our reviews and ratings, so below is a short round-up of some recent reviews and some updated ratings here.
 
L’Ecrivain, Dublin
L’Ecrivain continued to impress and improve on a recent visit. The seasonal tasting menu was well executed and included some stunning dishes. Venison, perfectly prepared and rolled in ash, with a deep beetroot sauce and blackberries. Roasted quail, with an amazing black pudding and fermented barley was another highly accomplished and excellent dish. Scallops with fermented cabbage was clean, with great depth and balance. The whole meal was accomplished and polished from one of the best restaurants in the capital.
 
Thorntons, Dublin
Our meals over the years in Thorntons have been a mixed bag. Some have been fantastic, like our tasting menu meal last year which was the best meal we had in Ireland last year. Some have been very poor however. Our recent lunch fell somewhere in between. A decent opening course of nicely cooked pigeon with a juniper sauce was a good start. The main was the let-down though. Pheasant, cooked for 10 hours, managed to keep the gamey flavour, but tasted overcooked and dry, served with an undercooked tiny cube of purple potato. It was not saved by a nice jus. Desserts were quite pleasing; a cleansing and punchy poitin sour, which was like a seasonal cocktail, and a nice chocolate crème bruleé, which would have been better without the popping candy. Thornton’s can be anything, and Kevin Thornton is one of Ireland’s finest ever chefs, but to us eating there in the last few years has been a bit of a lucky dip.
 
ETTO, Dublin
ETTO's€35 tasting menu, served Monday to Wednesday, proved to be an excellent saviour on a cold wet night. It is built around quality produce and good old fashioned cookery. Starting with some snacks of olives, ham and excellent croquettes. A lovely pork cheek braised in fino was moreish, indulgent and warming. A warming dessert of boozy prunes with mascarpone provided the warmth we needed to head back into the cold. ETTO is a charming bistro serving some well sourced and well executed food with friendly service.