Patrick Russell

📍 @two_pups_coffee by day, @notions.dublin by night 🍷 🍽️

Perched outside a cafe on the corner of Francis Street in the Liberties, Saturday evening bathed in August sun, a table of shared plates and a bottle of Piedmontese white in a cooler at arm’s length; Notions could be as cool and continental as Dublin gets in 2026.

The evening flip of perma-queued cafe Two Pups, where the food is flavour bomb plates to share and the wine list is accessible, sectioned by headings like “elegant & playful” and “lil’ funky”. The focus here is organic, biodynamic, minimal intervention bottles from smaller European vineyards. Sorry Boomers, natty wine it is.

Read our latest restaurant review in The Sunday Times Ireland app and website (link in bio!) or scroll through for some of what we ate ➡️

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This week’s Sunday Times Ireland restaurant review is the hottest opening of 2026 up north: @regencyhouse_, the hyped homecoming of Chris McClurg and Alice Stewart that more than lives up to expectation 💫

McClurg’s short menu is like a love letter to local produce but isn’t afraid to emulsify with international inspiration and ingredients. His cooking is technical and detail-driven, but the menu is meant to be eaten conversationally with everything shared.

The pork rib is emotional eating, the signature potato cake lavished in caviar and the sticky toffee fattened fabulously with beef dripping. This is more is more dining; Belfast has been blessed.

Read the full review in print today or on TheTimes app and website 🗞️ Less

It might not be Kerry’s day, but the Kingdom has a new seafood restaurant worthy of an all-Ireland: this week’s Sunday Times Ireland restaurant review is @inside_505, Damo Ring’s new restaurant on Dingle’s Dykegate Street 🦀

This corner of West Kerry has long been a destination for seafood, and 505 already cements itself among the best in town 💫

Make this your booking.

Read the full review on The Times website and app 📲 or in The Sunday Times Ireland print edition

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The Slea Head Drive on the #Dingle peninsula has no shortage of breathtaking views, and finally it has a fittingly fantastic and frankly unmissable lunch stop in the form of @ealuatthestonehouse, led by couple @kallam_m_chef & @cliona.walker 💫

We write in our recent Sunday Times Ireland restaurant rveiew: “this is levelled up lunch, classic and traditional in certain ways, appropriately reflecting the historic stone building setting, but bold and challenging in others — lobster bisque, bouillabaisse and seafood chowder sit beside tonkatsu chicken, dahl makhani and Thai-style mussels.”

The desserts from the pastry section are particularly masterful and shine a light on the technical skill of the chocolatier background, particularly the impressively lifelike lemon, which we write “close your eyes and you could be in a two star restaurant in any European capital eating this. Open them, you’re in a stone house on the edge of the Atlantic, beside fairy forts and beehive huts, past free-roaming sheep, serving dishes that put most other visitor centres to shame”.

⬅️ scroll for highlights of the menu and dishes ➡️

Read the full review on TheTimes.com (website or app) 💚💛

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Already a seaside staple in Strandhill, @shane__meehan__ and @angie_ef have crossed the county lines and opened a second, much larger spot in Ireland’s surf capital. Finally, Bundoran has a brilliant destination restaurant with @stoked_bundoran

⏮️ scroll for highlights of the menu and dishes ⏭️

Read the full review in the Sunday Times Ireland, in today’s paper, or via the website or app 🗞️

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A tale of two visits, two different restaurants within the same space and two different approaches from the same team.

⏮️ scroll for highlights of the menu and dishes ⏭️

Now, 78 Thomas St is home to the much-anticipated @mongoose_ie and all about simplicity in its cooking, smoke scenting the air and sublime value; a casual complement to its Michelin-starred older brother next door.

Our latest restaurant review, now live on chippaper.substack.com ✍🏼

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Your carvery could never…

@margadh_rha’s new Sunday Lunch menu may read like the stuff of costume-drama state dinners and bodice-ripper banquets but it is also very 2026 and one of the most exciting Sunday lunch options we’ve seen on a menu in recent years, with @cathal_leonard, formerly of Potager in Skerries, now leading the kitchen.

Full review in today’s Sunday Times Ireland; read in print, on the website and on the app 🗞️ Less

“There are not many restaurants in Dublin that can say they opened their doors in 2006 and are still standing, never mind still in contention,” we write in this week’s Sunday Times Ireland restaurant review. “@fallonandbyrne has lasted the course.”

We find a dining room at long last leaning into its potential, a destination that has always appeared accessible yet strangely unremarkable, given the prime location and pedigree… now with @hughhiggins88 leading the kitchen, the setting, produce and vision appear to be aligning to produce the strongest version of this dining room yet

Read the full review on TheTimes.ie and app 📰 Less

Lucy celebrates Ukrainian cuisine and culture in a way Dublin hasn’t seen before.

Transportive varenyky. A honey cake worth the trip alone. A comforting chicken Kyiv. While imperfect in parts this is a telling of people, nostalgia and place, not perfect contemporary dishes.

Our full review is in The Sunday Times Ireland this weekend. Read online now or in Sunday’s newspaper. Less