Dublin Dining

If you’ve been wondering when my blog posts about Ireland will end, this is the final post…for now.  Before closing our Ireland 2015 Tour, I’d be remiss, however, if I didn’t mention restaurants in Dublin and especially my favorite restaurant of the entire trip. I found the Whitefriar Grill online and immediately sent a link to my son and daughter-in-law to check it out. They had us at Ribs ‘N’ Rump. Their website says, “Whitefriar Grill’s Sunday Night Ribs ‘N’ Rump is nirvana for meat lovers everywhere! Stock up on the protein for the week ahead with a 14oz char-grilled rump steak, sticky BBQ baby back ribs, bacon ribs, honey glazed lamb ribs all served on a WFG chopping board, add to this two sides from (tobacco onions, greens, fries, balsamic onion & mushrooms) and you have a meat feast! All for 40 euros for two!” Olympic weightlifters in their spare time, Brian and Abi are definitely paleo meat lovers.  It just so happened we arrived in Dublin on Sunday so Whitefriar Grill went to the top of the list.

The food was all we hoped for and more, the atmosphere was casual with a hip vibe, the price was reasonable, and the service was outstanding. Located at 16 Aungier St., midway between St. Stephen’s Green and Dublin Castle, it was a bit of a search to find, but well worth the walk. If you visit Dublin and consider yourself a paleo carnivore, this restaurant is a must.

While in Dublin, we also ate at the Bank on College Green. We ended up at the Bank when our planned meal fell through at Gravedigger’s because they don’t serve food on Mondays, so always check the operating days and hours when choosing restaurants for your itinerary. Luckily, Brian had read about the Bank so we felt confident in our second choice. The building is very historic with Victorian architecture and comfortable furnishings and the food was good. Brian and Abi have a habit of ordering several different menu items usually from the starters and then sharing. That’s a tip I’m going to adopt because they get to try lots more dishes at no more cost.

Our last night in Ireland, Jim and I decided to have quintessential pub grub at Oliver St. John Gogartys in the Temple Bar area.  While the food was good, it was pricey due to the touristy location. Their extensive wine list gets the prize for the best wine quote: “There’s more philosophy in a bottle of wine than all the books in Trinity College.” I’ll drink to that. The restaurant is upstairs but the live trad music downstairs kept us there both before and after dinner.

Our biggest travel challenge has always been choosing restaurants. We minimize the difficulty by adopting a policy of one restaurant meal per day, usually in the evening and we try to plan ahead. I like to research restaurants and read customer reviews before taking a chance. We don’t mind paying premium prices if the food and service are outstanding but deciding on a place when the troops are hangry has led us into more than one culinary disaster. (Someday I’ll get my blog post written about searching for food while hangry on the Champs Élysée.)

On April 1, before we embarked on our Ireland 2015 tour, I tweeted, “People say the food in Ireland is terrible but we plan to prove them wrong.” And we did.

Based on events of April 2015.