All around the country many leading hotels have some exquisite and innovative pre-Christmas menus, while most are doing special lunches on Christmas Day itself.
Among the Dublin hotels that will be very busy in the weeks up to Christmas, with both corporate and personal diners, will be the Herbert Park Hotel, overlooking the eponymous park in Ballsbridge, Dublin. It's a very stylish place, with cool, contemporary decor, especially in its restaurant. On Christmas Day, it will have a special lunch, priced at £85 per person. Among the specialities here is goose.
Other luxury hotels in Dublin that will serve up festive fare over the coming weeks include the Clarence Hotel; Conrad International; the Fitzwilliam; the Shelbourne and Raglans restaurant in Jurys in Ballsbridge.
The Side Door restaurant in the Shelbourne has lots of enticing dishes, including as a sidedish, that very traditional Irish favourite, boxty. There's also an extensive Christmas lunch menu at the Shelbourne's other restaurant, No.27 The Green, which also does a very detailed and flavoursome dinner menu.
The Plaza hotel in Tallaght, one of the city's newest hotels, has a small intimate restaurant - the Olive Tree - and it's open for lunch six days a week and dinner every night of the week. Nigel Teague, the head chef, serves up an unusual blend of traditional Irish and Mediterranean menus; last Christmas, his game pie was a best seller.
Another top new spot in Dublin is Satchels restaurant in the new Schoolhouse Hotel on Northumberland Road. It has attractive lunch and dinner menus starting on November 26th.
Apart from the Jurys Doyles group, it's worth trying some of the restaurants in the other hotel groups, the likes of Ryan Hotels, which has the Gresham and the Royal Marine in the Dublin area; the Regency group in Dublin and Bray, whose hotels include the Regency and the North Star on Dublin's northside; and the Tower Hotels group, which has the Temple Bar Hotel, with a fine restaurant, right in the city centre.
The Great Southern group has hotels in many parts of the country, including Dublin airport. Fitzpatricks has fine dining in Killiney, Co Dublin; Cork and Bunratty.
Just outside Dublin, any number of classy venues offer all kinds of delicacies for Christmas. The classiest of them all is undoubtedly the Kildare Hotel and Country Club in Straffan, Co Kildare, which will be serving lots of Christmassy dishes in both its main hotel restaurant, the Byerley Turk, and in the adjoining golf clubhouse restaurant. Over Christmas Day, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, there'll be some exquisite menus, while in the weeks coming up to the holiday season, menus will have some seasonal specialities, including goose.
Also just outside Dublin, the soon-to-open BrookLodge Hotel at Macreddin village, between Rathdrum and Aughrim, promises to be a major attraction for pre-Christmas diners, with its emphasis on fresh natural and wild foods and lots of attractions in and around the hotel itself.
Other regional groups are also very active, like the Lynch Hotels group, which has developed substantially in the west of Ireland, including in the Limerick and Co Clare area. It, too, has some fine hotel restaurants. In Galway itself, the Westwood House Hotel is another new venture, aligned in the same group with the Station House Hotel in Clifden, the Holiday Inn in Killarney and the Schoolhouse in Dublin.
The Meridian restaurant in the Westwood House in Galway has a fine Christmas table d'hote lunch menu for £14.50 per person. Sinnott Hotels, too, including the Connemara Coast and the Connemara Gateway in Co Galway, have all kinds of tempting seasonal specialities on their preChristmas menus.
At Dromineer on the shores of Lough Derg, not far from Nenagh, Co Tipperary, the Dromineer Bay Hotel has some very enterprising Christmas menus that will encourage diners to linger over their food as they gaze out across the still waters of the lake.
Northern Ireland, too, is active in pre-Christmas hospitality, with the main hotel group there, Hastings, providing lots of seasonal pleasures in hotel restaurants. The Europa Hotel in Belfast city centre is doing a Christmas Fayre dinner menu, for £33.50 sterling per person, and including such main course pleasures as oven-roasted salmon.
THE Slieve Donard Hotel, in Newcastle, Co Down, is doing festive lunch and dinner menus from December 3rd. Many other hotels in Northern Ireland are into the Christmas swing of things, with party and individual dining menus over the next few weeks.
Dukes Hotel in University Street, Belfast, will be serving roast north Antrim turkey and ham on its lunch and dinner menus.
The Old Inn at Crawfordsburn in north Co Down has a really mouth-tingling range of menus, including lots of traditional fare, and an extensive Christmas corporate menu.
The Trinity Hotel in Strand Road, Derry, is doing some appetising Christmas lunch and dinner menus, alongside a very full entertainment programme.
Many people planning to dine out in the weeks coming up to Christmas, either personally, or with office and work parties, will find plenty of interest on the menus of many leading hotels around the country. In many of these hotel restaurants, as much innovative thought and expertise has gone into creating exciting, non-standard, non-traditional menus as in the restaurant sector itself. But be warned: many hotel restaurants are already well booked, so it's as well to book a table now, rather than leave it to the last minute.
