Sarah Webb

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“Sarah Webb is simply the best in town.”
We wrote that, in the first ever Bridgestone Irish Food Guide, as long ago now as 1991. And we added to it by giving Sarah Webb's Gallic Kitchen a STAR, one of only three stars we tight-fistedly handed out to the entire city.
Sarah Webb has aways been a precious commodity. We had discovered her a few years earlier, when she ran a little stall at the entrance to the Mother Redcap's market, the first true Dublin flea-and-food market, and from where she broadcast a simple message: this is the best pastry you can buy, and it's the best food I can make. She had an almost imperious confidence about her then, and she had a grandeur in a city that was far from grand
Twenty odd years later, and nowadays relocated to a grand Gallic Kitchen in Abbeyleix, nothing has changed with Sarah Webb. She has a lot more space now – loads of space, in a bright, svelte room with an al fresco zone out the back, unlike her previous shoebox rooms – but what hasn't changed is that her baking is benchmark: anytime you come in contact with one of those twin-cam sausage rolls then you know that it's going to be a very good day. Of course, you don't have to get yourself to Abbeyleix to get this splendiferous baking, because for years now the Gallic Kitchen has been a stalwart of several farmer's markets in and around Dublin. The Abbeyleix mothership and the market stalls prove an indelible truth about Ms Webb, which is that the consistency of her work is unmatched. In fact, she has improved with the years, she has gotten better. Her contribution to the culinary culture, from the desultory days of 1989 to the food-fixated present of 2015, has been colossal. She's the best in town, and always has been.

www.gallickitchen.com