While Ireland has world-class food and restaurants, the prices being charged in some establishments are too high, according to food writer John McKenna.
Launching the eighth edition of the Bridgestone Irish Food Guide, McKenna said a new generation here of chefs and food producers were the most exciting, creative and financially successful to have entered the business in a long time.
"Of course the price of food in some Dublin restaurants is too high - one has just to make comparisons with Belfast, even making allowances for the strength of sterling," he said.
"But the fact remains that we produce the best food in the world and we have some of the best chefs, too, and we should never feel we are second place to Italy or France."
McKenna said Irish restaurants did not feature in the 50 best restaurants in the world list because there were too few Irish food critics, not because they were not good enough. "I have a vote in this league and perhaps one or two other food writers, but we do not have the critical mass of food critics to vote any of our restaurants into this table," he said.
Asked to pick what he regarded as the leading restaurant in the country, McKenna named Neven Maguire's Bistro in Blacklion, Co Cavan, saying what was happening there was astonishing.
"He has given a lie to the idea that you have to go to the metropolis to eat and he is as fine a chef as can be found in the country. His premises is booked out for all of 2007."
He said Maguire's impact on Blacklion and north Cavan would be similar to what had happened to Ballymaloe 40 years ago with the arrival of Darina Allen.
McKenna said the Bridgestone guide has 130 additional pages and also lists the best places to eat and stay in Ireland, the best food specialists and the best hospitality providers. It is separate from the bestselling Bridgestone 100 Best Restaurants guide.
"The Irish food culture has been turned upside down. Producers are finding new ways to get their food to the marketplace and that is a dramatic change."
He said the 10,000 food lovers who visited the Dún Laoghaire market on an average summer's day were seeking alternatives to the "prevailing standard of bland complacency".
"They seek organic over chemicalised agriculture. They seek local rather than internationally freighted food and they seek the bond of recognition and trust in food relationships rather than the de-skilled exploitative mantra of supermarkets," he said.
Since McKenna's last guide was published in 2004, he said, there had been one negative downturn in artisan Irish food - the loss of smoked Irish wild Atlantic salmon which was no longer available.
In the intervening period, McKenna and his wife Sally have not warmed any further to one of Dublin's top restaurants, Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud.
He said yesterday he could never take from what had been achieved there and that it was "a brilliant sleek machine, but I cannot pretend that I love it."
The guide review states: "Many regarded it as not just the finest restaurant in Dublin, but the finest in the entire country.
"They are happy and we want to scream. Thank heavens the culinary arts are such a broad church," concluded the review.
Guide lines: what they said about . . .
Neven Maguire
"He is as fine a chef as can be found in the country. His premises is booked out for all of 2007."
. . . and Guilbaud's
"A brilliant sleek machine, but I cannot pretend that I love it."