Sally's blog

Primrose Café
Here’s why you should order the braised beef cheeks in the pretty Primrose Café, on Carlisle Road. Melanie Breslin’s husband, Ciaran, owns two butcher’s shops in the city, so Primrose is getting the best meat imaginable, which is why the brisket burger and the braised beef cheeks should be on your to-do list. It’s a sweet and charming room, the staff are fleet and polite, and they bake whizzo cakes, which explains why the room is chokkers. Primrose on Facebook

Dublin’s Ely Wine Bars have always made a signature of sourcing the world’s most exciting wines. Now, in a radical  new move, they are offering these great wines at affordable prices. Erik Robson of Ely explains the policy.

www.elywinebar.ie

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Mr Midleton, have been trading in Dublin for 40 years. In their shop in Mary Street they sell no less than 58 varieties of seed potato. St Patrick's day marks the date when your spuds should be planted! So we met up with Aoife Cox of The Daily Spud to find out her recommendation of what to plant.

www.mrmiddleton.com     www.thedailyspud.com

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The 100 Best Restaurants in Ireland digital smart guide, was published yesterday at a photocall in Brother Hubbards in Dublin. Here we talk to Dónal Mulligan, who designed the digital guide, about what influenced his choices.

Publishing the McKennas' Guides is very much a team effort. We would be nowhere without our Editors, Eamon Barrett, William Barry, Caroline Byrne, Aoife Cox, Elizabeth Field, Caroline Hennessy, Joe McNamee and Leslie Williams. 

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.

Our community video this week comes from Keith Bohanna, co-founder of Food Camp at Savour Kilkenny, and organiser of BiaBeag.

The video is an unedited version of the full programme of the now-achieving-cult-status-event that was the first BiaBeag event in Kilkenny, where Declan Ryan of Arbutus Bread, Joe Fitzmaurice of Cloughjordan Wood Fired Bakery and Josephine Plettenburg of Spelt Bakers came together in the Green Stage Room at Highbank Farm to discuss #realbread.

Tom O’Connell could do it the easy way. He could coast by on his family connections, he could allude to his famous siblings, tell you about his illustrious extended family. He could drop names. He could make it easy for himself.

Instead, he does the opposite. He never drops names, but he will tell you the minute he meets you of some interesting new food person he has discovered, and he will send you a mail advising that so-and-so is worth the detour. He obscures himself, the better to advocate for others.

Vivid. If you were allowed only one word to summarise Helen Cunningham’s Phoenix Cafe, then the word has to be: vivid. The food is wonderfully vivid: the flavours are bright and focused all the way through a gorgeous lamb and chickpea tagine, all the way through a superlative ham and Wicklow cheddar quiche, all the way through a superb beef lasagne. 

The salads are vivid – meticulously cooked lentil salad, crisp and tangy carrot salad and an especially vivid kimchi, all of them delivering healthfulness under the guise of deliciousness.

John and Sally McKenna launch the 2014 edition of The 100 Best Restaurants in Ireland in new “Smart Guide” format.



“Celebrating the arrival of the ‘Creative Casual’ restaurant” - John McKenna 



21 new entrants in 100 Best Restaurants in Ireland – 9 of which are in Dublin.



“DUBLIN CONTINUES TO FORGE AHEAD AS A BURGEONING RESTAURANT CITY.... IN A YEAR IN WHICH GENUINELY ORIGINAL, YOUNG TALENT HAS SHONE THROUGH”



McKennas announce new partnership with Dublin City University.


Lough Bishop Trailer