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BEST OF THE REST
Drury Street This food and shopping strip includes crafts and jewelry in the Irish Design Shop, toasties with wine at Loose Canon and the oldschool George’ s Street Arcade.
Mae Chef Gráinne O’ Keefe named this restaurant after her grandmother, and intimacy and personality ring through the menus, striking a lovely balance between fine dining and the personal touch.
Glasnevin Cemetery There are around 1.5 million souls resting here, and tours bring the colorful stories of artists, revolutionaries and folk heroes to life, culminating in city views from the 180-foot O’ Connell Tower.
Tradfest This January festival celebrates Irish identity through music, mixing up established and emerging performers with shows that often take place in unusual locations— including churches.
Clockwise from top: View over
the River Liffey toward Ha’ penny
Bridge; a sign at the Guinness
Storehouse; interior of the
Guinness Storehouse
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FOOD & DRINK
Think Dublin, and good food might not be the first topic that springs to mind. But that’ s changing. A new generation of chefs and restaurateurs, and a growing confidence in Irish breads, cheeses, lamb, beef, seafood and other ingredients, has seen a tasty and underrated food scene emerge here— from mid-range to Michelin stars and all sorts in between.
In The Liberties, Variety Jones sees chef Keelan Higgs cooking over fire with a funky, family-style approach to fine dining. Chef’ s choice menus are served to share: celeriac noodles topped with slivers of fire-roasted scallop and a golden confit egg might be one of the six courses, for example. On Parnell Square, two-Michelin-star Chapter One is chef Mickael Viljanen’ s polished poem to modern Irish cuisine— with decadent detailing in dishes like wild turbot with carrot, yuzu and bergamot and lobster sauce. Some Dublin foodies believe this will be Ireland’ s first three-Michelinstar restaurant.
Elsewhere, Legal Eagle is a contemporary take on the Irish gastropub( its Sunday roasts are among the city’ s best), and new arrivals worth talking about include globally influenced Floritz and Italian restaurant Lena. For a roving, convivial taste of the city’ s trends, consider a walking food tour with Fab Food Trails or Delicious Dublin Tours.
When it comes to drink,‘ the black stuff’ is on every bucket list. Tours of the Guinness Storehouse provide an immersive look at the iconic stout, the science behind it and its place in Irish culture. They culminate with a pint at the 360-degree Gravity Bar, which provides views stretching from Dublin Bay to the mountains.
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NIGHTLIFE
Temple Bar is the city’ s tourist hub— a boisterous, sometimes rowdy cobblestoned crossroads between the River Liffey and Central Bank building. Visitors often outnumber locals in the party pubs here, but it’ s worth an early evening walk for the atmosphere, and pubs such as The Temple Bar itself make a great photo( especially in its Christmas finery).
“ Good puzzle would be to cross Dublin without passing a pub,” Leopold Bloom says in James Joyce’ s Ulysses— a masterpiece set in the city. The challenge remains as tricky today, but why pass by when one can step inside? Mulligan’ s on Poolbeg Street and the Palace Bar on Fleet Street are famous literary pubs, while The Cobblestone in Smithfield hums with quality traditional music. The Dublin Literary Pub Crawl sees actors bring pub lore to life during a 2.5-hour tour.
Dublin nightlife quickly transitions from an after-work and pre-show scene to packed pubs, before tapering into fewer late bars and clubs after midnight— centered around lively strips like South William Street and Leeson Street. Its cocktail scene is going up a gear too, with new arrivals like the Collins Club at The Leinster, which serves batch drinks in a sexy crimson salon, alongside stalwarts like the Vintage Cocktail Club, marked by the letters VCC on its grubby steel door in Temple Bar.
Irish craft spirits are increasingly a feature— the Vintage Cocktail Club’ s‘ banshee’ cocktail is a good example, a mix of Micil poitín( a traditional distilled spirit), Powers single pot still Irish whiskey and Celtic honey liqueur along with bitters, apricot, apple and rhubarb.
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images: awl images |
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