Sally's blog

Canteen Celbridge may be the most significant restaurant in Ireland.
The clue to it’s importance lies in the name.
James Sheridan and Soizic Humbert’s restaurant is Canteen, the name they brought with them when they moved their premises from Blackrock, in south Dublin. Housed in a little market in Blackrock, it was called Canteen @ The Market.
But Canteen, today, is in Celbridge, County Kildare. And that’s why it’s so important.

I walked into Cinnamon Cottage and immediately felt as if it was my birthday. It was October 28th.
The thing is: my birthday actually falls on March 29th.
Don’t confuse me with the facts. Whatever day it is when I walk into Cinnamon Cottage, it feels like my birthday.
Patrick and Ali put together such an assemblage of good things, delicious things, tempting things, and make them all look as handsome as the day is long. When you walk into Cinnamon Cottage, you have to wake up to a reality: resistance is futile.

As Phibsborough slowly morphs in Hipsborough, Two Boys Brew is the crucial bridge between the old Dublin and the new.

How do you define success?
Well, try this for a definition: in the Cavaliere family’s Rinuccini restaurant, in Kilkenny city, they enjoyed their most successful year in business in 2015.
26 years in, and they hit their peak.
26 years after Antonio Cavaliere first opened the doors of his restaurant, back in the dog days of 1989, and the family have their best ever year of cooking and selling superb food and beautiful wines.

Announcing the arrival of your new restaurant in the centre of Limerick City by having the name gilded onto the window in double height silver lettering might seem a tad over confident. But, in the case of La Cucina Centro, which opened in early November on Henry Street, that confidence is well placed.

Imagine if there was a simple way in which you could help people, people who are suffering terrible pain.
Believe it or not, but there is a simple way in which you can help to alleviate the suffering of many, many people.
If you buy just one copy of Fishwives, a collection of recipes by Irish women writers, the €20 you spend will allow one person who is dying to achieve the dignity of a pain-free end to their life.

“Our plans are ambitious, a blueprint of wishes…” wrote Prefab Sprout's Paddy McAloon on the band’s 1997 album, Andromeda Heights.
Paddy might just as easily have been writing about the plans by GIY – Grow It Yourself – to build their own headquarters on the outskirts of Waterford City - a plan, unbelieveably, that was only hatched in 2012.

The non conformist tradition of coffee culture has made its home within the edgy land of Barrack Street, in Cork city.
Alchemy Coffee and Bookstore, which wraps itself around the corner of Barrack Street and Fort Street, understands truly, madly, and deeply, that Cork is the city where rebellion runs through the waters of the River Lee, and it replicates this spirit through a deftly organised, slightly anarchic, chaos.

The word 'ethnic' is used in the restaurant industry to describe food that's not native, not European. When you see the word 'ethnic', it's not referring to French or Italian food. It's talking about Asian, Indian and anything generally regarded as not 'Western'. It's bad.
In recognition of that fact, the term 'world cuisine' has been coined to make it sound less pejorative and, frankly, racist. It's still 'ethnic' in bullshit pyjamas, however.

The Sourdough Bread Course, one of a small number of bread courses taught by Joe Fitzmaurice of Riot Rye Bakery in County Tipperary, is a wonderful way to spend a day, even if you are just a nascent Breadhead.