Supporting the restaurant industry while avoiding dining rooms like the plague: Conor Stevens considers the nature and value of the picnic.

“You will want to range freely, as we did, across the animal kingdom to enjoy some faultlessly simple cooking.” – Conor Stevens dines at Piglet.

“This is hospitality in real time… Kudos to the first-year hospitality students of TU Dublin Cathal Brugha St.” – Conor Stevens

“I suspect that this place is not really intended for ‘the likes of me.’” – Conor Stevens

“Owners Simon Barrett and Liz Matthews would seem to know what you want, and Chef Paul McNamara knows how to cook, so after some eight months of rough trade on Aungier Street, is the desire to please still there?” – Conor Stevens

“You will struggle to find a finer car park-based restaurant here, or indeed anywhere”. – Conor Stevens

“When it comes to comfort food, however, one category exerts a gravitational pull for me – deep fried things.” We are here to talk fish and chips.

If you’re pining for a flavour of the before life, but would rather experience it from the shelter of your own crib, you have some excellent options.

“At the time of writing, I feel that we are faced with two very real existential threats, two malign forces fighting it out to wrack my nights with spittle-flecked convulsions.”

When news of Allta’s impending opening began to filter through last Summer you could almost hear the sound of many thighs being rhythmically rubbed by Dublin’s gastro-locusts, such were the levels of anticipation.

“There is a lot of potential here but the flavour profiles of too many of the dishes seem curiously polite, when I had been expecting full-throated profanity.”

The notion of Dim Sum originates in the tea-houses of the Silk Road and reaches back over centuries. It’s also something that you can enjoy right here in Dublin. 

“With this kind of food, palate fatigue begins to insinuate itself quite early on, the barrage of relentless refinement becomes wearing.”

Circa is a tasteful, sophisticated restaurant, hitting all the right notes.

“Apparently, brunch has been supplanted, as a thing to talk about in ‘food circles’, by the ‘Sunday Roast’.”

“This is as close to the experience of eating in Barcelona’s Boqueria market as you’ll find in dank Dublin”

If you want everything under the (rising) sun and you’re really not too fussy then this might be the place for you.

A destination restaurant in The Liberties. Whatever next?