Restaurant Reviews

No, The Swashbuachaill is not quite the slacker you might believe him to be. While I may have written little or nothing for this particular station in many a long moon, I have nonetheless been a busy beaver and over the coming days (Months? Years? Next lifetime?) shall be adding restaurant reviews written for print publications, the stuff that actually pays the bills. They are primarily written for the Irish Examiner although I also writes and reviews for other publications. (Where some restaurants have been reviewed more than once, it is usually because there has been a radical departure in the restaurant’s offering, e.g., a new chef or a change of direction. And then there’s one or two I simply like returning to again and again!)

 

THE FOOD DEPOT GOURMET STREET KITCHEN
Saturday, April 30, 2016
Joe McNamee
All over the world, some of the most wonderful dining experiences are to be had from street vendors …

 

HOLY SMOKE, CORK
Saturday, April 16, 2016
Joe McNamee
Holy Smoke is the latest such venture, with talented young Kerry chef John Relihan, formerly head chef of Jamie Oliver’s Barbecoa restaurant in London, at the helm …

 

LOAM, GALWAY
Saturday, April 02, 2016
Joe McNamee
First, a caveat, for this is one of the most ‘rigorous’ reviews I shall ever submit, having worked in the kitchens of Loam for two days prior to dining …

http://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/foodanddrink/restaurantreviews/restaurant-review-loam-galway-390812.html

 

LES GOURMANDISES, CORK
Saturday, March 19, 2016
Joe McNamee
Outside of Dublin, it is a while since I’ve ‘worked’ so hard for a Friday night restaurant booking …

 

ALI’S KITCHEN, CORK
Saturday, March 05, 2016
Joe McNamee
As restaurants are to my belly, so bookshops are to my brain, I love both equally and there are even times when one will do the job of the other …

 

CANTEEN, LIMERICK
Saturday, February 20, 2016
Joe McNamee
Down through the years, whether at home or abroad, I have always taken the ‘local temperature’, in a manner of speaking, by making a trip to a native barber …

 

UPDOWN BBQ GRILL RESTAURANT
Saturday, February 06, 2016
Joe McNamee
Perhaps it was last year’s broaching of the summit, hitting 50 and then the subsequent vertiginous tumble down the far slopes and into the ‘Valley of Dotage’ or maybe it was the recent passings of Bowie and Wogan, two great if very differing iconoclasts of a long-gone youthful landscape, but this reviewer appears to have taken rather a nostalgic turn of late …

 

BAD BOYS BBQ and THE WHITE RABBIT, CORK
Saturday, January 23, 2016
Joe McNamee
By the time I reached an age that permitted unsupervised roaming, the once-thriving, formerly handsome thoroughfare of MacCurtain Street was on its uppers …

 

THE PARLOUR CAFE, CORK
Saturday, January 09, 2016
By Joe McNamee
As a scowling youth with a greatly inflated sense of personal sophistication, yet still too young for public houses, I passed an inordinate amount of time in ‘upmarket’ cafés …

 

MIYAZAKI, CORK
Saturday, November 28, 2015
By Joe McNamee
TO the 1.3 billion-plus population of China, the Yangtze River is a symbol of the nation’s greatness. To a generation of Corkonians, however, the Yangtze River will always be the Chinese Takeaway a few hundred yards from the island city centre of Cork …

 

IDÁ’S, DINGLE
Saturday, December 26, 2015
By Joe McNamee
During the 2014 Dingle Food Festival, I was directed to Idá’s, sited in a former pizza restaurant. An upmarket pizza restaurant, mind you, plenty of raw timber and bare stone, but set up for a rapid turnover of diners and including a tricky ante-room through which all and sundry pass en route to the toilets. The staff were pleasant but otherwise completely at sea, most no more acquainted with menu or wine list than as if freshly encountered on Tinder and a glance into the kitchen suggested a rather frenetic atmosphere as orders built up. Yet, it was one of the three best restaurant meals I ate in the last year …

http://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/foodanddrink/restaurantreviews/restaurant-reviewidasdingle-373066.html

 

ORCHIDS RESTAURANT AT HAYFIELD MANOR HOTEL, CORK
Saturday, September 19, 2015
By Joe McNamee
THROUGH the dimming twilight, it is Dearly Beloved (DB) who first spots the serried ranks of vintage Rolls Royces lined up at Hayfield Manor. Even I — no petrolhead — admit it is charming, very ‘Downton’, most appropriate for this bucolic ‘Country Home’ oasis in the middle of town …

 

ELBOW LANE SMOKEHOUSE & MICROBREWERY, CORK
Saturday, February 07, 2015
By Joe McNamee
ONE CONSEQUENCE of the global economic kerfuffle was the increased clamour for culinary comfort, nostalgia for food that evoked the safe haven of childhood, when all was right with the world …

 

THE TANNERY RESTAURANT, DUNGARVAN
Sunday, January 26, 2014
By Joe McNamee
THE high, bright dining room with a ceiling that climbs on into forever is buzzing and extraordinarily packed already, two weeks into January, the month of hairshirts and half-rations, with Christmas a vague memory …

PERRY STREET MARKET CAFE
Sunday, January 12, 2014
By Joe McNamee
I HAVE been in this building before, and harbour distant memories of an erstwhile, dusty-and-dim carpet showroom. I also vaguely recall a fruitless tramp over musty, secondhand furniture in another of its incarnations …

http://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/foodanddrink/restaurantreviews/cork-perry-street-market-cafe-254802.html

 

GREENE’S, CORK
Sunday, December 15, 2013
By Joe McNamee
A NOCTURNAL approach to Greene’s never fails to stir the soul: through cobbled courtyard, the ruddy glow of old red brickwork under soft lamplight, the magical shimmering waterfall, all heavily pregnant with the promise of great pleasure ahead. And then we step into the very heart of ‘Office Christmas Party-ville’ …

http://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/foodanddrink/restaurantreviews/cork-christmas-spirit-in-greenes-restaurant-252483.html

 

PEPPER BRASSERIE, DUBLIN
Sunday, December 01, 2013
By Joe McNamee
SITED in The Bram Stoker Hotel, an attractive old Georgian pile perched on Dublin Bay, the omens bode well for the newly opened Pepper Brasserie & Grill …

 

THE FISH BAR @ THE ELECTRIC
Sunday, November 17, 2013
THE Fish Bar proprietors are serious operators, always keeping a gimlet eye on international restaurant trends. Each move is carefully calibrated, nothing left to chance, so even ‘casual’ is highly calculated …

 

HOUSE CAFE AT CORK OPERA HOUSE
By Joe McNamee
Sunday, October 20, 2013
THE addition of a glorious glass facade just over a decade ago transformed an erstwhile ugly duckling Cork Opera House, giving a local institution a face befitting its legendary status …

 

IYER’S CAFE
Sunday, October 06, 2013
By Joe McNamee
EACH night, before popes fall asleep, they pray fervently for the grace to some day attain the level of omniscience and infallibility that is the sole preserve of food critics and restaurant reviewers …

 

ORSO, CORK
Sunday, September 22, 2013
By Joe McNamee
They have near made a virtue of the restricted space in Orso. With Moorish-style tiling and soft twinkling lights, it is akin to stumbling on a narrow little old-town bar in southern Spain …

 

GREENE’S, CORK
Saturday, January 28, 2012
By Joe NcNamee
GREENE’S opening gambit is an exterior most restaurants would kill for: off a busy city street, through an old stone archway to a secluded natural waterfall …

STAR ANISE, CORK
Saturday, February 11, 2012
By Joe McNamee
IN the days before Dearly Beloved and I were blessed with those small, nocturnal creatures that subsist on a strict diet of hard cash and parental resolve, we were fond of Star Anise for a little mid-week morale booster …

THE ELECTRIC, CORK
Saturday, February 25, 2012
By Joe McNamee
THE Electric experience begins on the phone. A reservation is almost an afterthought on a cold midweek Champions League night in February, but …

http://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/foodanddrink/switch-on-the-senses-184879.html

SAGE RESTAURANT, MIDLETON
Saturday, January 14, 2012
By Joe McNamee
WHILE there will always be charlatans in the restaurant trade — as in all walks of life — the huge surge in promoting local produce on Irish menus is, for the most part, genuine. But those chefs truly embracing the concept of ‘Eat Local’ are a much rarer breed …

http://www.examiner.ie/weekend/foodandwine/a-wise-choice-179944.html