Google Map: Where to Eat in Ireland

Restaurants have become our remit, so just like 'Now That's What I Call Music!' here's an exclusive (and fast-growing) compilation of written recommendations for right now...

Just over a year ago we began publishing restaurant reviews here on Chip Paper on Substack. It’s something we consciously refrained from doing for so long because we felt as online content creators we really didn’t have a remit for critique. It wasn’t our shtick for most of the decade we’d been writing, especially with the push away from long-form blogs and towards snappy, visual-led content on social media. We’d focused much more on championing and spotlighting food producers in our work.

With time grew confidence and experience, so we then tentatively took baby steps in restaurant reviewing. The pieces here are longer (maybe 2,000 words, which a section editor would tear their hair out at, but: our space, our rules) and punctuated by hand-drawn digital illustrations - never pictures - so as to be as personal and ‘hand-made’ as possible.

Then, six months ago we received the opportunity to join the Sunday Times Ireland as its new restaurant critics, a job we’ve been relishing every week like licking a bowl of cake batter. We’ve had 25 reviews published thus far, and in our little sidebar section of three similar recommendations every time we’ve shone a light on a further 75 restaurants, wine bars, food trucks, hotels and pop-ups. That chalks up to around 100 restaurants we’ve written about within those pages –– some, 1,000 word full reviews and others just a sentence or two, but all equally worthy of their mentions.

Before that gig, though, we’d say we were a pair who were highly-regarded when it comes to restaurant recommendations anyway, both at home and abroad. One quick glance at our Instagram inbox over the last five years would quickly re-affirm that. [Sidebar: if you ever thought content creators seemed non-prolific, we’re here to tell you 75% of the time is spent answering private messages] Not a day goes by - sometimes not an hour of the day goes by - that we don’t get requests slid into our DMs for personalised restaurant recommendations. Sometimes it’s Stockholm or London, more often than not it’s Brussels, almost always it’s Lisbon or somewhere in Portugal, whilst Ireland - north and south - is also a constant query, mostly from those located here rather than visiting tourists.

Being useful, highly-regarded and in demand as an authority on eating out is a truly wonderful feeling. It doesn’t happen overnight, either, it comes solely from years of graft in familiarising and then establishing that authority.