Food

The best Sunday lunch places in Ireland

From shameless 1970s indulgence to a late afternoon feast, you won’t go wrong with these great spots

The Old Spot in Dublin 4: Photograph: Cyril Byrne/The Irish Times

Catherine Cleary
Lisa Cope
Thu Mar 5 2020 - 07:00

The Old Spot

The Old Spot
14 Bath Avenue, Sandymount, Dublin 4, theoldspot.ie
Sundays and roast dinners are inseparable, but when you want something a bit more special than what comes out of your own oven, head for the Old Spot. Its weekly roasts include beer-roasted free-range chicken with sausage, sage and onion stuffing, or Pat McLoughlin's dry-aged sirloin of beef, both with duck-fat roasties and cauliflower cheese, or take your Sunday dining up a notch with Gloucester Old Spot pork belly, mustard mousseline, York cabbage and Puy lentils. Lisa Cope

The Legal Eagle
1-2 Chancery Place, Dublin 7, thelegaleagle.ie
The Seriously Seventies Sunday-lunch menu is shamelessly 1970s. Prawn cocktail? Yep. Deep-fried Brie? You betcha. Chicken cordon bleu? Check. But like everything the restaurateur Elaine Murphy does, the ingredients in these food cliches are the best she can get her hands on. A generation can relive childhood Sunday dinners deliciously. Catherine Cleary

Bastible
111 South Circular Road, Dublin 8, bastible.com
Bastible has always been one of Dublin's most sought-after Sunday-lunch destinations for those in the know, but the arrival home of the former Noma chef Cúán Greene, now Bastible's head chef, has had the food world in something of a spin. Sunday lunch here is a journey through foraging, fermentation and maximum flavour, with plates of food often so breathtakingly beautiful that you may struggle to eat them and ruin the picture. LC

Old Street
Old Street, Malahide, Co Dublin, oldstreet.ie
Old Street's Sunday roast rib of beef with giant Yorkshire puddings has been a permanent fixture on the menu since it opened, in 2017, and for good reason: if it ever took it off there would probably be a riot. The menu's not actually roast heavy, with seafood pie, pasta and grilled sea trout also featuring, for example, and on Sundays children eat free (one for each adult). Along with its lovingly composed wine list, these are all more reasons to visit. A walk along the seafront after lunch is yet another. LC

READ MORE

The Tannery

The Tannery
10 Quay Street, Dungarvan, Co Waterford, tannery.ie
Sunday lunch tends to be a family affair, and it would be easy to assume that Paul and Máire Flynn's white-tableclothed first-floor restaurant in a Dungarvan town house isn't an ideal place to take younger members of the family, but that would be a mistake. Despite the fine-dining appearance, the Tannery happily welcomes all ages for its crab creme brulee and rib-eye steak with Coolea cauliflower cheese, and if ordering from the children's menu, rest assured it comes presented with all the panache of the adult food. The perfect place to take a budding gourmet. LC

Snaffles Restaurant
Castle Leslie, Glaslough, Co Monaghan, castleleslie.com
A proper big-house school of cooking is in place here, with inspiration for some of the recipes having been taken from the estate cookbook of this Monaghan castle in the village of Glaslough. Your wild-meat Sunday lunch doesn't get much better than a plate of venison from the estate or rare-breed pork with kitchen-garden vegetables. CC

1826 Adare
Main Street, Adare, Co Limerick, 1826adare.ie
Wade Murphy understands the leisurely nature of a Sunday lunch. So the chef's Adare version is a late lunch where service starts at 3pm with sittings until 5pm. The menu is the simplest of ideas, with two choices for each course, so your decision-making brain can put its feet up after a long week's work. Yorkshire puddings and duck-fat roasties are a must. CC

The Courthouse Restaurant
1 Monaghan Street, Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan, courthouserestaurant.ie
At €28 for three courses, the Sunday lunch at this Carrickmacross restaurant is a proper steal. There are plenty of other offerings in this price bracket, but chef-owner Conor Mee is cooking at a different level from the carvery cavalcade. I loved how they cooked the vegetables here on my last visit, and, along with roasted meats, they're regularly roasting celeriac for the non-meat-eaters' Sunday lunch. CC

The Olde Post Inn
Cloverhill, Co Cavan, theoldepostinn.com
The Cavan chef Gearóid Lynch and his wife, Tara, have maintained a lovely piece of social history in Cloverhill as a different kind of hub for nearly two decades, after taking over a restaurant in the former post office. Their diners come from both sides of the Border, and Lynch is a champion of great Irish food, which makes Sunday lunch here a real joy. CC