The Spice Bag | October 2024

Our monthly newsletter (free for all subscribers) chock full of delicious recommendations and updates

Is it summer? Is it autumn? Who knows, welcome to another edition of our FREE monthly digest, exclusively for our entire Substack readership. Here follows a monthly highlights reel, packed FULL of suggestions of where to eat and drink, places we’ve been exploring, what we’ve been reading, watching and streaming, all of which we hope will inspire you in your own exploits!

Travelling

• 10 days ago we took our first trip to Finland to the city of Tampere, we’re sharing lots of content around it but want to know the HAUL of supermarket loot we brought home? Watch on TikTok

• Just back from a quick weekend trip to Belfast and planning for a quick break in Manchester soon. We already booked Erst — thanks Jay Rayner!

• On the plane home from Helsinki we booked a trip to Lisbon for eight weeks’ time, cannot wait for a Nikkei Milk Punch again at our friends Peter and Joana’s bar, Onda

Reading

• Is it time to pity restaurant critics? [The Spectator, which we came to via The Code]

• Jimi Famurewa’s Hates and Greats and Jimi’s Very Best Lines (sad to see him leave London’s The Standard after four years as its restaurant critic)

• Got our hands on The Dinner Table: 100 Writers on Food [#AF], compiled by Ella Risbridger and loving diving into it

• Also just bought Back To The Local [#AF], a charming little illustrated compendium of the post-war pub scene in London

Eating: Great Tastes Lingering This Past Month

• Hawker eggs at General Merchants in Belfast, every single time sensational

• The George Motz x Dashburger pop-up at Open Gate, the smells, the sights, the pints, the patties… heaven

• Naturally the whole baked ham on the bone on the Ballynahinch Castle breakfast buffet, legendary!

• Pie and Drip on a Sunday-only at Established, we were lucky to be in the city to nab a slice and cup of this one recently

• Egg & chips AND a ‘Warley’ burger at Fuscos in the Liberties <3

Eating: Places We Want To Eat/Drink In Right This Second…

• You have heard about the glorious collab dinner of our dreams? Two of our faves are coming together for one night only: Lisbon’s SEM is visiting Cork’s The Glass Curtain next month, last few tables available on GC’s website

• Someone asked us about Bologna on Instagram and we desperately want to go back to Oltre followed by Bar Senza Nome for negronis. A perfect evening.

• Anna Haugh is opening up a new wine bar in London called Little Sister, adjoining her fine dining Irish restaurant, Myrtle, in Chelsea — refresh your memory with our first-ever Chip Paper restaurant review of there below!

RECAP: Sunday Times Ireland Reviews

In our Sunday Times Ireland restaurant reviews column over the last month we’ve covered casual spots in Kerry, Wicklow, Connemara and South Dublin:

• The Mad Monk, an outlier within the Quinlan’s fish bar stable in Killarney

• Yellov, some of the best vegetarian kebaps, hummus and falafel you will find in Ireland served by Didem Köse from her converted horse box in Greystones

• Oifig an Fish, Clifden’s new show pony and cleverly-titled contemporary fish and chip shop, from the same team as Snappy Snappy crab food truck

• September, the new wine bar in Blackrock, which we’ve gone to a couple of times this summer since we now live so close-by

• This week’s review - EXCLUSIVE ALERT - will be O’Mahony’s of Watergrasshill in Cork 👀

Don’t forget: paid subscribers get access to THE EPIC MAP below, the only place you will find snippets, excerpts and links of ALL our Sunday Times Ireland restaurant content –– the perfect bookmark to plan eating & drinking ‘round Ireland.

Watching

• We have been LOVING In Vogue: The 90s [Disney+], a really rich six-part documentary detailing American Vogue’s reinvention under Anna Wintour and Grace Coddington and how they navigated the ever-changing fashion landscape at the turn of the century. Aside from the A-list cameos, it’s wonderful to get more up close and personal with the famously reserved faces behind the fashion magazine behemoth

• Have you seen Culinary Class Wars on Netflix? It’s Iron Chef-meets-Squid Games, where 100 chefs compete against one another - 20 big-name, industry icons, many with Michelin stars - against 80 ‘unknown’ up-and-coming chefs from across South Korea. A few eps in we’re still unconvinced

  

• Loving catching up on Hacks [Apple TV], yes, late to the party but AMAZING

• Drag Race: Global All Stars [WowPresentsPlus] had such promise and hype as a monumental clash of international titans but has been such a dud watch, plagued with allegations of bullying, racism and favouritism

Special offer: Subscription Reduced!

This is the best time *ever* to leap from free to paid subscriber as we have just reduced our rates: now €5/ for monthly renewal (the minimum Substack allows) or €35 for annual renewal — which works out over 40% cheaper than before and less than a single takeaway coffee at under below €3 per month.

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