Get your eat on: Dublin’s top traditional food spots

Foodies were out in force recently for the Dublin Bay Prawn Festival but even if you missed it, there are venues serving old school eats in the city year round. Here are five of the best.

By Robert Carry

Gallagher’s Boxty House

Slap bang in the centre of Temple Bar, this spot very much targets the tourist dollar and tends to be close to capacity with a compliment of wet-eyed Americans, particularly at the weekends.

However, with Irish music and rustic furniture, Gallagher’s is a convenient spot to take in some distinctly Irish fare. You’re talking the likes of Dublin coddle, bacon and colcannon, Baileys cheesecake or  Boxty potato dumplings with sauted mushrooms and spring onions and Cashel blue cheese cream sauce. Can’t beat this gear with a stick.

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The Pepper Pot

The Pepper Pot, set as it is in a period building on South William Street, strikes you as the place you might have to shell out big to spend your lunchtime in. Despite the fact that it’s mid-day food is nothing short of sensational, the prices are very reasonable. You can get a soup of the day with brown soda bread for €4.50 or a ‘mini-soup’ with any main for €2.

The menu is narrow, but the chefs have each of the choices nailed down. Shimmy past the creative compliment of lunchtime bagels and sandwiches, and plough into the seasonal tarts – like the one with creamy organic leak caraway seeds and durrus cheese.

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Temple Bar Market

The Temple Bar vomitorium we know and love has, in fact, got many faces. One of the lesser seen is the Saturday Temple Bar Farmers Market. Venues at which farmers, growers and casual vendors were once dotted all over the city centre. For a time, Moore Street and the Smithfield Horse Fair were about the size of it.

Happily, the trend in locally sourced produce has seen an upsurge in old style markets are on the upswing, and Temple Bar on a Saturday is the scene of one of the best.

It’ not all misshapen carrots and parsnips, there is some seriously top-end food on the go from across the county. Stop by Noirin’s bakehouse for a take-home loaf and Out of the Blue – a branch of a fish sales firm that, since its foundation in the 1940s, has built up a network of sources direct access to the best of seafood to be found off our coast.

This is a must-do for foodies runs every Saturday from 10am to 4.30pm.

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Wolfes Irish Artisan Bistro

It has often been said that there is no such thing as Irish cusine beyond Irish stew and bacon and cabbage. There is an element of truth there – a couple of centuries being forced to live exclusively off potatoes isn’t conducive to culinary intricacy.

However, there are Irish chefs out there determined to develop new dishes out of what was retained. They deserve all the kudos they get from working to rebuild Irish cuisine. One great example is Wolfe’s Irish Artisan Bistro on the somewhat rough-around-the-edges Capel Street.

The chefs here are creative, but their starting point is solid, high quality Irish ingredients. Starters such as Crows Black Pudding, Roast Apple with Sage Salad and Apple Purée and mains like the fantastic Skeaghanore Breast of Duck, Duaphinoise, with Spinach,  Free Range Crispy Duck Egg and Prune Jus give a good idea of what they are trying to do here.

Surprisingly, the prices here are also reasonable, with a two course pre-theatre for €18.

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O'Shea's Merchant Hotel

There is no shortage of places to get your hands on a bowl of Irish stew, but some are a tad better than others. One of the lesser-known but higher-quality venues is the restaurant of O’Shea’s Merchant hotel on Merchant’s Quay.

It’s probably illegal to eat stew from a rectangular bowl off a glass table with chrome legs and happily, O’Shea’s is all worn wood and bare-brick walls. The menu is a basic one, but its traditional Irish stew is exceptional. It tends to be predominantly stocked with grinning tourists wolf down spoonfuls between gulps of the black stuff, but there’s no good reason why they should have a monopoly on this exclusively Irish delight.

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