A little later than usual this month due to a deadline on moving house last week, welcome to another edition of our FREE monthly digest, exclusively for our entire Substack readership, which is a monthly highlights reel, packed full of suggestions of where to eat and drink, places we’ve explored, what we’ve been reading, watching and streaming, which we hope will inspire you in your own exploits!
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Eating: Great Tastes Lingering This Past Month
Mammoth slices of watermelon in Tenerife, unbelievably sweet ‘n’ juicy 🍉
Mussel skewer from top new Thai grill spot Achara. Order several portions.
The schnitzel at Charlotte Quay for a pre-theatre bite before Wicked!
Eating: Sunday Times Ireland Restaurant Reviews + Dublin Delish
For our Sunday Times Ireland reviews, we’ve gone super casual in high summer, from burgers at Bunsen (now with added bacon) to Malaysian curry at My Kitchen (‘by Sham Hanifa’) in Carrick-on-Shannon and from Strandfield - a cafe, florist and provisions store just shy of the border and off the M1 - to newly-opened, near-perfect Thai spot Achara on Aston Quay (where everything is delectable!). We also covered the much anticipated re-opening - almost 1,000 days since it closed - of Coppinger in Dublin 2.
Over at 98FM in his weekly Dublin Delish radio slot, live on Tuesdays around 12pm, Russell took listeners to newly-opened NY-style deli Little Geno’s on Stephen’s Green and Bosca, a pizza vending machine in Newcastle! Click through to watch reels of both on our IG page.
Moving: DROG→DUB!
We’re now back in the big smoke, Dublin residents over a decade since the last time we called this city home. As we settle into the deep south, betwixt the Dublin mountains and the Irish Sea, we are adoring getting to know these new surrounds. Sad as it was to leave our former home, after months of packing, unpacking, re-packing, decluttering, recycling and endless cleaning we were more than ready to depart and never want to endure a house move again...
Thanks for your patience during this time –– it has taken over our lives (as we all know house moves do) which meant much less time to focus on Chip Paper. Thankfully we’re out of the woods now and brimming with ideas.
Listening: Endless Podcasts!
Having been on the road for much of the last month, ferrying stuff between two properties 75 minutes apart in a combination of cars, vans and trucks, we’ve kept ourselves occupied and focused by gobbling up a record amount of podcasts, some of the ones that stand out the most include:
🍷 If you follow British politics you will no doubt be aware of Electoral Dysfunction, presented by Sky News’ Political Editor Beth Rigby and former Scottish Conversatives leader Ruth Davidson. It’s always a great, informative listen with lots of perspective-tilting.
We adore The Food Chain from the BBC World Service, every week they keep us guessing with what they will cover next. Recently: what is ‘super sweet’ corn and whatever happened to original corn, then?
Saoirse-Monica Jackson is having a moment (and is a total food lover!) The Derry Girls actress has appeared as a guest on no fewer than three food podcasts: Grace Dent’s Comfort Eating; Dish with Angela Hartnett and Nick Grimshaw; and now Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster. We could listen to her talking all things food in her Derry lilt for hours.
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Reading: Cookbooks
We moved a massive amount of cookbooks this past month (and donated a rake of them to our local charity shop) which got us thinking about our favourite hobby: tracing a line across the shelves of cookery titles in bookshops… we delve into that in our latest long-read, below.
Travelling: Tenerife, London, Irish Castles, Finland + An Asian Adventure
We took time out early last month to recoup for a week in Tenerife. We have been to a few of the Canary Islands but never this one. We barely left the hotel and it was bliss. More details on the hotel, if you’re interested, here.
We’re just back from London (Kylie + Marina playing Hyde Park was life-giving) and spent the trip, shock, eating and drinking: Normans in Islington, Barrafina on the Strand, The Devonshire and Brasserie Zédel in Soho, Pearly Queen and Rochelle Canteen in Shoreditch, Dishoom in Kensington… glorious. London in summer always slaps.
We have a couple of exciting trips coming up in the next few weeks, an Irish castle stay, a quick trip to friends in Southampton and our first-ever bite of Finland, plus we’re planning a long-awaited return trip to Asia (for the first time post-Covid) for later this year. We're also desperate to return to Lisbon, as we’ve been tagged a hundred times by different people there this summer following our killer recommendations and feeling serious FOMO. Get us a pastel de nata in one hand and a porto tonico in the other, STAT.
ICYMI: our latest in the ‘Everywhere We Ate In’ series:
Thanks for reading! Chip Paper is brought to you by Patrick Hanlon and Russell Alford, also known collectively under our brand name: GastroGays. Irish food and travel writers, Sunday Times Ireland restaurant critics, broadcasters and content creators, this is our home of food long-reads, deep-dives and guides. You can find us elsewhere on Instagram, TikTok and our website GastroGays.com
