Sally's blog

There are 2 factors that distinguish the wine merchants of Ireland.
First of all, they have great taste. They find the best, most interesting wines, and bring them into Ireland for us.
Secondly, they are super efficient. Mail in some complex, mixed-up order, and chances are a courier is going to be calling you 48 hours later asking where you want the cases brought to.

Michie Sushi isn’t just a food company. It’s a food company with a philosophy. And that food philosophy runs deep.
Just look, for instance, at their crispy salmon skin sushi. It’s delightful, delicious, and it’s a piece of edible philosophy, which comes straight from the Japanese ambition to cherish every piece of every food ingredient.
Eating it makes you feel good, in two ways. Firstly, it’s tactile, crunchy, and divertingly wholesome. Secondly, you feel good to be enjoying, and paying respect to, a part of the fish that the Irish traditionally disregard.

Surgical precision. That's what Brian Heaton brings to the breakfast table at Castlewood, the elegant lodgings he runs with his wife, Helen, at The Wood, in Dingle, County Kerry.
Just look at that breakfast bap. Sounds simple, but look carefully at the thin folded slices of bacon under the thin slices of tomato under the perfectly poached eggs under the perfectly executed hollandaise sauce.
Surgical. Precise. Astounding, actually.

Kate Cooke’s strong willed personality is the blood which pumps throughout the veins of QC’s, an oustanding restaurant-with-rooms in pretty Caherciveen, on the Ring of Kerry.

Sit down to have a chat with Heather Flaherty, and Ms Flaherty will quickly start to talk about how some people in the food business have "just got it"
“It”, of course, is not just the love of food, it’s not just the love of cooking, it’s not just the love of the pell-mell of service in a busy restaurant. “It” is the total, complete and utter immersion in the nitty gritty and the detail of the kitchen, the dish, the food, the space, the buzz.

8 performances a week. That's the theatrical timetable for the culinary hoofers in Holywood's The Bay Tree. They revise the old Broadway maxim, however, giving seven daytime performances, and a nightly production on Fridays evenings.And like any theatrical endeavour, The Bay Tree is a machine: sleek; slick; polished; professional; designed to please.

My very best dining experiences of 2016—from simple rural café to Michelin-starred restaurant—all shared a common thread, a deeply-held commitment on the part of the relevant chefs to finest, local produce. No mere tokenism, no cynical ticking of the ‘provenance’ box, we’re talking total immersion, terroir colliding with technical ability and creative flair to yield distinctly and uniquely Irish cuisines.

If your chef can’t write your menu, you need a new chef.

I take great pride in my menu writing. I spent 6 long hard years with my mentor Tom Devlin in Boston getting put through the ringer every time I wrote one. He was a smart man who taught me the ins and outs of proper menu compilation.

Dan Ulrich checks the temperature of the water. He checks the weight of the coffee. He checks the weight of the water. He sets a timer as he pours the water on the ground coffee to release the bloom from the beans.
Dan Ulrich is making you a cup of coffee. This is CoffeeWerk & Press, in the centre of Galway city.

Zuni Townhouse is the kind of destination you’d hope to find in Paris, so exceptionally and cosily does it fit into Killkenny’s idiosyncratic Patrick Street.
This little boutique hotel is a definition of class, an institution which is confident in its modernity.