After we finish fussing and fighting over the content of the annual 100 Best Restaurants in Ireland, after we have decided which are the 100 best places to eat throughout the country, we like to take a step back and see if anything is shared by the folk who make the final cut.
For 2014, we came up with the expression “creative casual’ as a term to describe the fact that many of the new entrants were concentrating on what was on the plate, and weren’t consulting with an interior architect and a lighting designer.
But there is slightly more lying behind the creative casual tag, and it is this: Irish restaurateurs are not copying anyone. Irish restaurants are not imitating.
For decades now, restaurants in Ireland have taken their imprimatur from the old French style. A room should look like this and be decorated in this way. Service should be done like this. Cooks cook, waiters serve, sommeliers pour.
But now, the level of self-confidence amongst modern Irish restaurateurs is so high that they aren’t playing by that rulebook any more. Your room can look like a shoebox – Canteen in Limerick. It can look like something out of an interiors magazine – 1826 in Adare. It can look like a Bauhaus classroom – OX in Belfast. It can look like someone’s sitting room – Aniar in Galway. The chef can serve the food, the sommelier can have tattoos, the wine list can be half a page long and the menu can offer four things to eat.
It doesn’t matter anymore how you do it. What you do is what counts, and not the way you do it.
This is, we would suggest, a mighty step forward for Irish restaurants. Walk in the door of a modern creative, casual Irish restaurant and you can feel that confidence, that self-confidence. We have turned a significant corner. Something has changed.
