Dining high spots of 2012

People are still spending money in restaurants, but they're looking for better value and less pomp, writes CATHERINE CLEARY

A nother year, another 50 odd shades of dinner, and if there was a theme to 2012 it was inconspicuous consumption. The culture of flaunting wealth during the boom has been replaced with hiding it in a Penneys bag. People spent money last year but they didn’t want to be seen spending it, so fine dining was replaced with casual eating and everyone felt more comfortable.

Cash poured into mid-range restaurants in the millions, much of it flowing out of the pub trade and into the bite-after-work places which have opened in their droves in Dublin. According to one insider, one new Dublin restaurant this year took €115,000 in the first week of opening its doors.

Outside Dublin, the inconspicuous consumption crowd stayed home lots of nights, leaving rural and smaller city restaurants struggling to survive. It’s harder to pretend you haven’t a bean when you’re clinking Prosecco glasses in a small town or village.

The lovely O’Brien Chophouse in Lismore was the highest profile casualty when its summer tourist trade went through the floor and it closed before the winter lull could kill it stone dead.

The French food inspectors decided Ireland deserved two more stars, a surprise one for Locks on Dublin’s Grand Canal and the second for Galway’s Aniar. Like or loathe the Michelin system, Aniar’s star was a blessing from the sky that sets it on a firm footing. Its bookings are now coming from customers who would never have considered dining in this restaurant that looks like a coffee-shop before the red rosette for Enda McEvoy’s stellar food arrived.

The second theme was the deconstructed dinner. There were fewer starters, mains and desserts and more tasting plates, tapas, mezze, small stuff. It wasn’t all good or even interesting. Small is not necessarily beautiful.

So these are my restaurant oscars for the year, the magical mouthfuls I enjoyed from kitchen craftspeople who let the best (mostly Irish) ingredients speak for themselves. The places where it’s all about the food, not the celebrities or the largest profit margin or the franchise, gave me my happiest food moments. So long 2012 and thanks for all the fish ... and chips, and steak and risotto and beetroot.

Best starter

Finnish chef Mikael Viljanen is a master of taking an ingredient such as celeriac and making it into the best, most memorable piece of celeriac you’ll taste. He did it this year with sliced duck hearts and a piece of celeriac that he dressed up like an aubergine with a dark rye skin. His cooking at The Greenhouse on Dublin’s Dawson Street is memorable.

The Greenhouse, Dawson St, Dublin 2, tel: 01-676 7015

A close second was Kevin Thornton’s four fat Dublin bay prawns in a fluffy prawn and truffle sauce in Thornton’s Restaurant on Stephen’s Green. Each prawn came with a pearly slice of white Alba truffle on top, mandolined thin enough to read through.

Thorntons Restaurant, 128 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, tel: 01-478 7008

The indie starter Oscar goes to the Whitefriar Grill where the €8 bone marrow with oxtail marmalade and salsa verde will blow you away. Vegetarians stand back, this is the meatiest blast of umami you can find on a winter’s night in Dublin. You will want to lick the bones clean.

The Whitefriar Grill, 16 Aungier St, Dublin 2, tel: 01-475 9003

Best main course

I don’t often eat alone but I did in Waterford’s lovely French restaurant L’Atmosphere where I had a perfect boeuf bourguignon. Served in a cast iron pot, it was all the good things in one place: slow-cooked beef cheeks, carrots, button mushrooms, lardons, red wine and potatoes. A simple, classic culinary hug.

L’Atmosphere, 19 Henrietta St, Waterford, tel: 051-585426

Wuff, the new arrival in Benburb Street, served me the best piece of fish of 2012 – a china white piece of cod with spinach and small potatoes.

Wuff, 23 Benburn St, Dublin 7, tel: 01-532 0347

The best steak was on my dining companion’s plate in Bridge Bar and Bistro in Dublin’s Docklands. Sourced, griddled and seasoned to perfection.

Bridge Bar and Bistro, The Malting Tower, Grand Canal Quay, Dublin 2, tel: 01-639 4941

Best dessert

On the Faroe Islands a young Danish chef, Rasmus Leck Fischer, dabbed a piece of creamy goat’s cheese on a plate and scooped out the middle so it looked like a meringue. He poured salted caramel into the hollow (salted with sea salt from the water around the islands) and then dotted it with parchment thin shards of meringue and mandolined raw slices of Jerusalem artichoke. This was the dessert of my dreams. Hands down one of the nicest flavour combinations I ate in 2012.

Best family lunch

We still have a long way to go to provide food for families, outside the nugget, sausage, goujon triangle. Most children’s dinners go directly from freezer to fryer to fork and are a catastrophe in their salt and fat levels. Not at the Fatted Calf in Glasson, Co Westmeath, where we had the best family meal ever. We parents got pulled pork with mustardy remoulade, and Jane Russell venison sausage with red cabbage. The boys got skin-on potato wedges, a succulent home-made half-burger and a child’s portion of the fish. I love the Fatted Calf and everything it’s doing in a small former pub in a tiny out-of-the-way village.

The Fatted Calf, Glasson, Co Westmeath, tel: 0906-485208

Best budget restaurant

Sushi that’s as cheap as chips came to Dublin’s Capel Street this year in the shape of Musashi. The house tempura is as good as any more expensive restaurant, slices of sweet potato, aubergine, red pepper and sweet, nutty courgette strips. The tempura oyster was a delight. The gyozas combined the sticky steamed pastry texture with a crisply fried bottom and cost less than €5 a plate.

Musashi Noodles and Sushi Bar, 15 Capel St, Dublin 1, tel: 01-532 8068

A close second was Brioche ce Soir, the Aungier Street coffee shop by day that puts on its fake eyelashes and heels and becomes a small-plate restaurant at night. Small, well-cooked dishes such as horseradish-marinated salmon with pickled cucumber and duck liver pate made the night pocket and palate friendly.

Brioche, 65 Aungier St, Dublin 2, tel: 01-475 8536

Vegetable of the year

In Copenhagen’s Geist restaurant the chefs sliced lightly pickled cauliflower turning it from a vegetable into a beautiful sea coral, set off with skyr (a yoghurt-like Icelandic cheese) and slivers of truffle. A masterclass in what you can do with one two humble ingredients and a bit of luxury, when you add some vision.

Geist, Kongens Nytorv 8, Copenhagen, Denmark, tel: 00-45-331337 13

Salad of the year

Richard Gleeson’s small plate of lusciousness in Food Game in Dublin’s Ringsend takes this one. Leaves that tasted fresh, with none of that compost-y odour they take on from those salad bags, leathery hits of fresh mint, citrus marinated strips of beetroot, excellent Toonsbridge mozzarella and all for €6.

Food Game, 10 South Lotts Road, Dublin 4, tel: 01-281 5002

A close second was Brother Hubbard’s on Dublin’s Capel Street where cucumber, beetroot, celeriac remoulade, yoghurt, walnuts chives and giant cous cous pressed all my pleasure buttons and turned a quick bite into a long lunch.

Brother Hubbards, 153 Capel St, Dublin 1, tel: 01-441 1112

Best craic of the year

The night Bono walked into Bite on South Frederick Street in Dublin 2 and had his dinner. And no, as far as I’m aware, he didn’t pay anyone else’s bill.

Bite, 29 South Frederick St, Dublin 2, tel: 01-679 7000

Best meal

If the mid-range restaurant was king in 2012, then top of the pile was The Pig’s Ear, the small Dublin restaurant that was doing everything right the night I visited.

Great Irish ingredients such as salmon and buttermilk curd, ham knuckle terrine, champ, potted shrimp and a spelt and beetroot risotto with raw fennel made for a brilliant meal, all served with a calm, in-control professionalism that helps you sit back and relax. It’s a small restaurant and it’s amazing value.

The Pig’s Ear, 4 Nassau St, Dublin 2, tel: 01-670 3865

Best meal outside Dublin

This has to go the Wild Honey Inn, a beautiful place in a gorgeous part of the country. Chef proprietor Aidan McGrath’s ham hock terrine alone is worth the trip west. He puts green capers into it and tops it with celeriac remoulade. And he takes Birgitta Curtin’s Burren Smokehouse smoked salmon and turns it into a marbled terrine that would make you burst into song, if you were so minded.

The Wild Honey Inn, Lisdoonvarna, Co Clare, tel: 065-707 4300