A Michelin-starred chef is going down the bistronomie route. But we need a new word (gastrosteria maybe) to describe it, because it's not French but mid-range Italian. The Cork chef who made vegetables sexy has plans to bring a new restaurant to the capital. The woman behind The Winding Stair and The Woollen Mills has another two reinventions up her sleeve. Fine dining is coming to Glasthule. Ely gastropub has left Dublin's Grand Canal Square but will be popping back up elsewhere. A Mayo woman is bringing a new seafood restaurant home to Westport. And in Belfast, the Ox effect is spreading with one of its sous chefs starting his own restaurant. Here's what's new in the Irish restaurant scene.
Chapter two? He's not calling it Chapter Two but Michelin-starred chef Ross Lewis has been quietly building a second Dublin restaurant around the idea of authentic Italian food. Last year Lewis bought the lease on Pizza e Porchetta, the ground floor restaurant under a railway bridge in Dublin's south Docklands. In the coming weeks, it will get a new name, which was still a work in progress at the time of writing. (Il Ponte, (the bridge) in Italian, or L'Arco (the arch) were hot contenders). Brooklyn chef Steve Levine (who has worked in Mario Batali's New York restaurants) will take over as head chef. Will Lewis be cooking there? "No," he says firmly. "I have to be very clear about that. It's enough of a handful having Chapter One."
The new restaurant is the fruit of a 15-year friendship between Lewis and the bearded Italian chef Luciano Tona and Manuela Spinelli, former interpreter for Giovanni Trapattoni. Lewis is happy to admit he's on a learning curve about Italian food.
Pizza e Porchetta hasn't closed for the changeover, which must be a little bit like trying to service a car while it's being driven. But there's a new kitchen and the rebranded awnings are due to go up in the coming weeks. Ronan Ryan is keeping everything front of house running smoothly in between trips to Italy with Lewis to source wine and some of the food.
There will still be pizza, but it's going to be "a more elevated offering". Fingal Ferguson of Gubbeen farm will be doing a range of charcuterie and Lewis is also welcoming back a former Chapter One chef, Anna Mullen from Melbourne, who has three years work in Venice under her belt.
Paradise for vegetarians Denis Cotter has been itching to do something new for a while. The Cork chef, who runs the city's brilliant Cafe Paradiso, wants to "broaden what we do," in any potential move. This month he's had an interesting offer of a large Dublin premises with a separate bar and dining room space which would allow him to do a mid-range lunch and tapas bar food alongside a higher end evening restaurant. The new restaurant will probably involve a collaboration with another chef.
Ideally Cotter would like to focus 80 per cent on vegetables, his Paradiso signature, and the rest on well-sourced fish and seafood. “I’d baulk a little bit at meat,” he says. But the formula in the end will depend on who emerges as his collaborative partner. If the city centre premises happens he would hope to open in July.
New on the northside The unstoppable Elaine Murphy is due to open the doors of the revamped The Washerwoman restaurant in Glasnevin next month. It's an old stone building (parts of which date back to the 18th century) on Glasnevin Hill. The menu is due to be family-focused with a "roasting-tray dinner" option for families that will change daily. Weekend brunch and Sunday roasts will feature some of the dishes from The Winding Stair and The Woollen Mills and they plan to install a meat ageing room for steaks.
Next up will be a revamp of The Legal Eagle beside the Four Courts, where it will be, and here she apologises for the "much over used and misused term" gastropub food. This sounds like it will be an earthy Woollen Mills style offering of old school grills featuring offal, anchovies, pork scratchings, potted brisket, ox tongue fritters and pickled eggs.
“Again we want to get away from traditional restaurant model and give mixed groups of diners and drinkers an opportunity for a casual meeting spot with no expectation that everyone at the table will eat.” The Legal Eagle is due to open in May.
Fine dining in Glasthule It was Tribes, became Le Petit Cochon and from the middle of next month it will be The Cookbook Cafe. The restaurant in Glasthule in south Dublin is being reopened by chef Audrey McDonald. The idea sprang from her love of cookbooks and she's putting her extensive collection on the shelves for thumbing in idle moments. (Always more relaxing than screen-tapping). The restaurant will have 50 covers and nominate a cookbook of the week every week. She struggles to condense the food offering into two snappy sentences, which is a good sign in my book.
After 25 years cooking, mainly as a private caterer, it'll be Ottolenghi-RiverCafe-Bobby Flay inspired. "I dislike fussiness on a plate and sometimes imperfect can be perfect. Roasting is my favourite style of cooking. I adore the natural caramelisation of food and how it can completely change the flavour." There might be cookery demos too. Music is sorted too. McDonald's husband Tom Dunne is being roped in to host vinyl Saturday brunches.
Ely Gastropub moves on It's a case of one door closing and another one opening for Ely Gastropub, which shut it doors on Hanover Quay on Grand Canal Square earlier this month. The building, which was administered by receivers, was sold last summer.
The company, run by husband and wife team Erik and Michelle Robson, said Ely Gastropub would open elsewhere in Dublin and they have "other projects and plans to open other venues" in the coming year. Watch this space.
All in a Muddle in Belfast Chef Gareth McCaughey worked in London for five years before returning to Belfast where he then worked with chefs Stephen Toman and Niall McKenna of James St South. When Toman set up Ox Restaurant in 2013, McCaughey joined him as Ox's sous chef.
The 37-year-old always had plans to open his own place and this is to be the year he does it in a premises in Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter on a street called Warehouse Lane.
It's as quiet a place as the name suggests but he's just heard the happy news of plans for a boutique hotel opposite him. The restaurant is going to be called The Muddler's Club after a Belfast secret society of the 1700s.
McCaughey thinks the name will fit well with the cocktails he’s planning to serve.
And the food? Well the 55-seater will be serving “an eclectic mix of what I would really like to sit down and eat”.
All going well diners should be able to get a taste of that by the end of April.
Maguire heads home Mayo-born chef Áine Maguire had her 18th and her 21st birthday parties in Quay Cottage, the veteran Westport restaurant she has just taken over. She had been "looking for a premises for the guts of a year," when the restaurant came up. She returns west after a decade in Dublin.
She came to the city to open the revamped Winding Stair with Elaine Murphy and most recently has been working as private chef to the British ambassador and reorganising the Bord Gáis Energy theatre restaurant.
She hopes to reopen Quay Cottage as a 50-seater restaurant in March after it gets a dust down and a new coat of paint. It’s in a beautiful setting with a slipway and a view “of the the most photographed boat shed in Mayo”.
She wants to put fish and seafood firmly back on the menu, including cluisín or "little ears" – bivalves she picked off the rocks as a child "when no-one called it foraging". There's also a courtyard where she wants to grow herbs for the kitchen.
