One of Dublin’s best known city center hotels is The Westbury Hotel and today we visit it’s in house Cafe Novo to sample the food. Restaurants that are located within Hotels are often thought of as places that are only frequented by hotel patrons or tourists but with an entrance just off Grafton Street Cafe Novo is the perfect spot to grab a relaxed bite to eat or a cocktail. When you enter the bar/cafe you can feel that the retro design is all about tempting shoppers in for a quick bite to eat and the menu is set up in such a way that there are some great affordable snack deals alongside some great cocktails that are clearly geared towards the after work crowd.

The food is great value and the menu when we visited featured great dihes that got the mouth watering including Wild Mushroom And Spinach Tortellini with a Tomato and herb cream sauce, Seared Barramundi on stir fried egg noodles with vegetables and Thai broth and Roasted Vine Tomato Soup With Bruschetta. You’ll find something for pretty much everybody on the menu and you can pick and choose between starters or full mains with you not feeling out of pocket. Where it does fall down is the pricing on the wine menu as it is not cheap. They seem to have stuck with hotel prices where they could have been a little cheaper to encourage more punters in for the full dining experience.

All in all Cafe Novo has been turned in to a great venue that could stand on it’s own away from the Westbury hotel but it’s location is the biggest thing that it has going for it. There is some really great cooking going on here and with a menu that features some real bargains this could become on of “the” places to eat in Dublin over the coming years. I am not a huge fan of hotel restaurants but this one does not fall in to that bracket and should be visited. Check out Cafe Novo. Cafe Novo On Foursquare. Cafe Novo on Yelp.

Not far from where I live is the beacon Hotel in Sandyford which has some of the most innovative food around. There is a great selection of food in the My Thai restaurant which is well worth a visit but the best food in my opinion is served in the bar and comes in the form of a bento box. For those of you not familiar with the bento box it is a Japanese tradition which features a few different types of food stir fried up with a selection of super foods and fresh fruit.

The food is also incredibly cheap for a hotel and the Beacon is great value for money with a bento box costing a very modest 13.50. The place always has a mellow atmosphere and with free wifi is a favorite for the business crowds. You have a huge list of options to choose from on the bento box menu with favorites of mine including spring rolls, simosas, dumplings, chicken satay, beef stir fry and noodles. You leave after lunch having had a good big cheap meal that leaves you full but the food is clean and simple and you don’t have that bloated feeling.

This is more of a lunch spot than anything as the place will have a certain buzz to it but the evenings are quiet with the more sedate hotel crowd. Get down to the Beacon hotel and give the Bento box a go if oyu have not tried one yet. Top food

You don’t always expect to find good food in a shopping center but there are a group of Restaurants in Dundrum that include L’Officina Dunne & Crescenzi which is a great Italian spot serving great food nestled in between the 2 popular chains Milanos and Cafe Mao. The food is traditional Italian and unlike some places claiming to serve Italian food in Ireland this place is the real deal with most of the staff clearly dark in complexion and coming from Italy. The tables are packed together very tight so as they can squeeze about 50 covers in to a very confined place and although not massively comfortable it does add to the buzz of the place and mean that it always feels like the place is packed and the atmosphere is good.

I always go for a bowl of pasta and they have everything form a simple plate of spaghetti with a tomato sauce (if you can cook that well you can cook anything) up to more complicated Gnocci and meat dishes. Prices are fairly cheap with good honest plates of food costing between 10 and 20 Euros. There are also a huge selection of smaller tasing plates and starters and it can be the perfect place to pick and mix a couple of tasting Italian items.

If you are really lucky and the weather is in your favor you will be able to sit out on the terrace (you’ll be lucky to get a table!) and watch all the shoppers coming and going with their new found goods at Dundrum shopping center. It is an unusual place for a restaurant and I wouldn’t really go there as a destination as I can think of better scenery than a Macdonalds and a cinema as I leave a restaurant but if you are hungry after a round of the shops then L’Officina is the perfect place to stop in and get a bit of traditional Italian food in the heart of Dundrum.

I’m very lucky in that I work right beside one of my favourite cafes/restaurants. Michael’s Food and Wine is based in Mount Merrion, Co.Dublin. They started off as a Wine Shop, and now provide top quality Italian Food, sourced straight from Italy.

First and foremost, they do amazing coffee. I regularly pop in for a take-away Americano and it’s refreshing to taste some authentic Italian coffee. If you’re looking for a relaxed chat, they’ve a nice set up for a coffee and a slice of cake. Ask for their Pistachio cake…it is heaven!

In terms of lunch, it can get pretty packed in there at times, but if you get a seat, try their Anti-Pasto dish. You’ll get a selection of their stuffed tomatoes and peppers, Vegetarian Lasagne and cheeses.

Of course, they’ve an incredible selection of wines. In fact, it’s a bit of wine connoisseur’s heaven. I longingly gaze at their shelves of whites, reds, desert wines and more every time I’m in there.

In short, this is a brilliant, if slightly hidden gem that deserves your attention. Pop in if you’re in the area!

Michael’s Food & Wine
57 Deerpark Road Mount Merrion Co Dublin
Tel:+353 (0)1 278 0377

I know one of my last posts was about a restaurant in the Pavillion, Dun Laoghaire, but this restaurant, which is right beside Cafe Mao, is too good to leave out.

It’s a delightful little bistro with a really great menu and wine selection, serving authentic Italian food. They don’t seem to have a website that I can easily link to, but I’ll give you a run down of my experience.

The restaurant is very small, and booking is advised. We managed to get a place at the bar, which is a little crowded, but perfectly comfortable. I wasn’t in the mood for a starter, so I chose the bread and olives board. It comes with olive oil drizzled over it and some great olives in a bowl. Great appetiser and less calories than a full starter…I think! Read the rest of this entry »

I am going to go over the top and claim that Avoca is one of the best things that has ever happened to food in Ireland. I only started visiting their cafes a little over a year ago but the food is good and wholesome that I make sure I get there at least once a month now. With 6 different locations around Dublin and Wicklow it really is a great place to spend a weekend getting a healthy lunch with salads that taste so devine they feel as if they should really be bad for you.

It’s all self service but don’t let that make you think that the food is sub standard because this is simple some of the best cooking in Ireland. The beauty is that Avoca doesn’t try to be something that is not and simply focused on creating high quality consistent food. There are 2 things that they do especially well and that is salads and the amazing selection of desserts that you can see above. You basically match a main course item with 3 delicious salads and the choice we had included sheppard’s pie, pork and apricot terrine, goat’s cheese quiche, chicken and broccoli bake and various other delicious options. You can see from the picture of the pie and salads here that the portions are extremely generous and I would advise that you visit Avoca very hungry indeed and to be full before you get to taste those desserts would be a massive sin!

I know I seem to be going over the top about Avoca but it really is that good. One thing that many people do complain about is the price with a meal for 2 with 2 desserts costing 45 Euros which is steep for self service food without any drinks but I would rather pay this sort of money for quality that pay a similar amount in some snooty place with bad service and small portions in town. It certainly isn’t cheap but you know exactly what you are getting every time and with the size of the portions in Avoca you certainly won’t leave hungry. Well worth a trip and one of the top 5 food experiences in Ireland.

I wrote here about SABA originally, but wanted to re-post some of my thoughts.

Saba is a great little spot, located right beside Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre car park. Very handy place to leave my car. They mainly serve Thai, but there’s also some Vietnamese food on the menu too.

First impressions as I entered the bar was that it was hopping. Always a good sign. The bar was buzzing and, peeking into the restaurant itself, business looked good.

The restaurant is very well laid out, and the dim lighting makes for a nice atmosphere.We took our seats very promptly and were met with efficient service from the start.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favourite places to meet friends for a meal would have to be Cafe Mao in Dun Laoghaire. I know it’s something of a chain at this point, but the quality of food that you get for the price is quite something. Their current deal is €20 for a three course meal of anything on the menu. Beat that. Add a glass of wine for another 2 quid. Their house white is drinkable.

My usual starter is the Mao House Salad. This is served in a very generous size and is served with Chicken on roast peppers with cashews and creamy sauce with crispy sweet potato. Other starters worth trying are the Satay chicken sticks or the Mao wings. Read the rest of this entry »

If I was going to be starting to review restaurants I thought it would be a good idea to start with one of my favorites and give it a positive review to start the ball rolling in a positive light! Odessa is one of the oldest and best known spots for brunch in Dublin and they have been doing good brunches at the weekend from way before the Celtic Tiger arrived and we all found out that Brunch rocked! The place is always packed and you simply need a booking at the weekend although I have chanced my arm a good few times and lucked out after a 10 minute wait. Most people come armed with newspapers and seating is split between the comfortable and relaxed downstairs section where you can just about make out the print on your paper and the upstairs which is positively buzzing and full of life. I would suggest the more relaxed downstairs of you are getting over a hangover with upstairs more suited to those topping up with a cocktail over brunch.

Everything on the menu is brilliant. You really could pick anything and it would taste amazing. This probably sounds over the top but the beauty of the food in Odessa is not it’s complexity or amazing ingredients but it is simple food done really well. Eggs Benedict, French toast, full breakfasts and my own favorite the Racheros are all brilliant in their simplicity and exactly the sort of comfort food you would be looking for at the weekend.

Drinks are also special with perfect piping hot coffee and fresh juices and smoothies all served a plenty. Simple things like free coffee top ups may seem like the finer details but in a country obsessed with ripping you off and getting more out of you that is a pleasure. The prices in general are very very modest indeed with brunch for 2 costing between 30 and 40 euros and leaving you full for the rest of the day.

The food for the rest of the week is also fantastic

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