WHILE great cooking has been happening all around the country, the year that was in it belongs to Dublin and its chefs. Just before Christmas, there wasn't a table to be had in good Dublin restaurants, and the profile of Irish chefs - especially Dublin chefs - has never been higher. There has never been a better time to be a cook in the capital.
The Dublin chefs in our picture have all enjoyed the annus mirabilis that was 1996. Kevin Thornton, of Thornton's restaurant, was garlanded with awards and stars from all the guides and all and sundry. John Dunne, head chef in Alan O'Reilly's Morel's Bistro, saw the successful opening of a second branch of a bistro whose magic formula of swish decor, terrific value and mighty atmosphere is pulling in more than 600 happy souls a week to Glasthule.
Michael Martin re opened The Tea Rooms, in the super groovy Clarence Hotel, and instantly revolutionised the concept of a hotel dining room, for here is a place to put on a par with every boutique hotel anywhere on the planet. Mr Martin won our second Beck's Taste of Temple Bar Award for his work.
Last year's winner of the Temple Bar Award, Vincent Vis's Chameleon Restaurant, showed the happy commingling in Temple Bar of a stylish little shoestring operation such as the Chameleon prospering alongside mega buck outfits such as the Clarence. Mr Vis has steadily refurbished the upper floors of his restaurant, allowing more folk to enjoy his delightful Indonesian cookery.
Eleanor Walsh will soon be another Temple Bar restaurateur, when she opens her new restaurant in Meeting House Square this month. A veteran of Cooke's Cafe who has recently been consulting in Cork's new Bodega, Ms Walsh has already been busy sourcing the fine Irish products from around the country which are providing the backbone of the new Irish restaurant cookery. Ms Walsh is a Dingle woman, and the fine smoked bacon and black pudding of her aunt, Noreen Curran, will soon be making their way up from the Kingdom to Meeting House Square.
The continuing success of restaurants such as the Ayumi Ya, where Hiro Takahashi prepares the sushi, the sashimi, the teppanyaki and all the other intricate thrills of Japanese cooking, has been congratulated by our continuing demands that ethnic cooking become ever more authentic and real.
The bright and busy road of the successful restaurateur lies stretching ahead of Neil McEvoy, winner of this year's Bailey's Young Chef of the Year competition, and a fortunate man currently learning the ropes in Derry Clarke's L'Ecrivain, one of the capital's hottest kitchens.
And that road of the successful restaurateur, of a chef who has always made full use of fine Irish foods - he was one of the first to make dishes using Clonakilty black pudding, years ago - is one familiar to John Howard, of Le Coq Hardi, our elder statesman, dressed here in the classic whites of the kitchen as befits his seniority. The rest of the young blades are sporting the funky chef's gear of Kevin Gormley's company, Pressure Cookin', cool jackets and checked trews which you can expect to see gracing the fast moving figures of every chef in every restaurant in the country. Like all public figures, they have to cut shapes both in and out of the kitchen.