Service Award:
The Malthouse
Galway, County Glway
“Is there another restaurant team that tries as hard as the crew in The Malt House?”, we asked, rhetorically, in The Irish Food Guide. Not that we know of. Mary and Paul Grealish’s team are worthy of whatever superlatives you can summon, and their work creates one of the most beloved of restaurants on the west coast.
Design Award:
McCartney’s of Moira
Moira, Co Down, Northern Ireland
The legendary McCartney’s of Moira is a butcher’s shop and deli and café that is a female space. By female we mean that colour and light and space have been used in a way that other female shop spaces – think Fallon & Byrne, think URRU, think Avoca – use colour and light and space. The gorgeous new shop and deli of McCartney’s abuts their butcher’s shop, and integrates itself into the famous shop. Modest as ever, George McCartney hands over the responsibility for making such a lovely space to his daughter, Judith, who studied at art school, but we have a feeling that the presence of another daughter, Sarah, who works with Judith as the newest generation of McCartney’s, has likely also had a major part to play.
