Spice Bag Newsletter | April 2025

Our spicy lil' monthly mailer full of delicious little chunks, from recommendations, suggestions and updates to exclusives and insider tidbits –– free for all our readership!

Welcome to April’s edition of Spice Bag, a highlights reel of sorts, a delicious mish-mash of where we have been eating/what we’ve been cooking, where we have been travelling, the things we’ve streamed or tuned into and other updates, insight, tidbits and industry news.

What & Where We’ve Been Eating…

• To Orwell Road on Monday night for their industry evening which celebrated the stunning Calvey’s Achill Mountain Lamb (which you can order online!). Breaking down the animal, snacks included lamb flat bread and lamb rarebit followed by dishes of lamb belly Caesar; sous vide leg with burnt aubergine and tagine sauce; and a sensational main of loin with wild garlic and asparagus. Dessert was homemade baklava with Velvet Cloud sorbet. €50pp (with Tindal Wine pairing €35pp extra) is pretty sensational value, not to mention an ideal Monday night spot in a fantastic restaurant. Keep your eyes peeled for next month’s one!

• We have been obsessing over sole of late, from cooking it at home in lots of butter and capers (with a zingy beurre blanc on the side) to ordering it whenever we see it cooked on the bone and served to-share in restaurants.

• We made a long-awaited return trip to Forêt for a long, leisurely pre-Paddy’s Day date lunch (which was double duty as wedding planning). One of our highest scores from last year’s Sunday Times Ireland column, pretty much everything Forêt does is knock out, we adore it.

• In our own kitchen we’ve been making mushroom fritti and fried chicken (“shock,” said no one), a peanut butter swirled Swedish kladdkaka and also the Al Dente pre-made pastas and sauces, hand-made by Luca and Ruth in Dublin. We bought Trecce to go with the cacio e pepe sauce, both delicious.

• Took a last minute trip to Galway and stayed at the beautiful food-led boutique B&B The Stop for the first time

• We are OB SESSED with Barnhill Stores, the best small, independent supermarket in the area of Dublin we moved to last year that we’ve only made our way to fairly recently. They dent our bank account every single time we enter its doors, and that’s where we picked up the pasta above and they also stock Domaine Des Anges wines, a fantastic Irish-owned vineyard in the Southern Rhône we visited this month two years ago.

• Finally, if you love oysters as much as we do, are you following Georgiana on TikTok yet? Particularly adore the videos where she goes to Wright Brothers and orders a 80-platter for lunch at £1 a pop. Legend! The joy in gulping each one gives us second hand joy <3

RECAP: Sunday Times Ireland Reviews

The March restaurant reviews from us in the Sunday Times Ireland, in case you missed them in print/online:

• Lena, Dublin 8

• Bearú, New Ross, Co. Wexford

• The Pig’s Ear, Dublin 2

• Waterman House, Belfast

• A pair of new openings (but actually more replacement openings) will be the next two editions of our column: Rei Momo, a Brazilian grill concept and caipirinha bar on Dublin’s Drury Street (replacing Bootleg) and Blackthorn in Barna, which replaces WEST at The Twelve Hotel but same team of Nathan Hindmarsh in the kitchen and Fergal Guiney on the floor.

ICYMI:

Spice Blend: A Mix of Industry Updates

• Dublin 1 is getting a brand new cocktail bar from the mixology maestros behind Bar 1661. Sackville Lounge opens on Thursday 3rd April on Sackville Place just off O’Connell Street, reviving the long-standing pub loved by locals. Focusing more on classics than experimental pours, the menu features “15 cocktails including three house serves, and a curated selection of beer, whiskey, wine, fizz, and snacks,” plus a short non-alcoholic menu too. Joanne Cronin (who writes

  Ocras
  here on Subtack) got the first look for the Irish Times.

• After a year’s break in 2024, Me Auld Flower festival is returning as a “series” of outdoor markets from the same team behind The Big Grill. It originally took place over St. Patrick’s weekend in 2023 but in 2025 it’s looking like it will be late spring or summer and details of location(s) are still under wraps.

• In Belfast, Charlie’s - the debut pizza shop from Marty Duggan AKA The Pi Guy - is set to open this month at 306-310 Ormeau Road, with the final interior finishes being completed as we speak

• Fíon Eile, a new wine shop in the North Circular Road in Phibsborough, is soon to open from a pair of industry pros: ex-Chapter One Sommelier Paul Gartland and ex-Hawksmoor Dublin wine manager Sinéad McCarthy (before that sommelier/assistant manager at Volpe Nera)

• In other wine news, Liberties coffee spot Two Pups on Francis Street has flipped into a wine bar - called Notions, love it - in the evenings, beginning from tomorrow Thursday 3rd April. From 5pm onwards Thurs-Sun weekly find natural wines, running from entry and affordable to splash-out and special, alongside small like polenta chips and house pickles,

• And finally in wine-adjacent news, soon to open above The Corkscrew in Dublin 2 is Amai by Viktor, a Brazilian fine dining restaurant.

Vote: Dublin Delish Award!

As you may know, Russell is a Producer at 98FM, where he presents his Dublin Delish feature every Tuesday lunchtime! The station is currently seeking nominations for the Best of Dublin Awards 2025, which celebrate everything that makes the city great, including its food and 98FM wants to recognise and celebrate those talents.

With categories such as Best Takeaway, Best Coffee and Best Pub open for your nominations, another new category is The Dublin Delish Award, the most delish and uniquely Dublin places you can think of, from food trucks to fine dining, and everything in between! Nominations close THIS Friday (4th April, midday) - Click here for the form - before a shortlist is put to a public vote from next week. We know you all have great taste, so we would love if you are Dublin-based and could take a few minutes to nominate in this category (and others if you please!)

Join the (nearly) 50K! Are you following?

We’re inching ever closer to 50,000 on Instagram. It honestly feels like it has been about five years since we hit 40,000 the growth has been that slow (whilst others seem to add on 100K and 200K overnight) but how and ever we would love to eventually reach that milestone, so please do follow us over there to keep on top of our latest recipes, travels, reels and restaurant writing…

Reading & Streaming…

Last month we gave a tranche of TV shows we’ve been binging but this month it’s all about articles and podcasts

• “Everyone has a Substack. What could possibly go wrong?” [Bloomberg]

• On Owning Your Work by

  Emma Gannon
  [Substack]

• “What is açaí and why is it suddenly everywhere?” [Us, on RTÉ, chatting to Conor Sweeny from DAE]

• Loved delving into the 51 women featured in Code Hospitality’s annual Women of the Year list. A who’s who of game-changing females across the spectrum of UK hospitality, whittled down by an industry panel from 1,400 nominations. Imagine an Irish equivalent of this list?

• Chip Shop Delicacies from Around Ireland [again us on RTÉ Lifestyle]

• Alex O’Neill and Richie Castillo of Bahay (and Masarap authors) have just launched Episode 1 of ‘A Taste of Home’, their pod delving into food and identity with a different guest each time.

• We are beyond 500 episodes late to This Is Taste from the editors of Taste Cooking in New York City but working our way backwards earnestly. On a recent drive cross-country we enjoyed this episode on the misconceptions around German Food with Luisa Weiss.

• When Amy Poehler launches a podcast [Good Hang] with the first guest being Tina Fey you just KNOW we’re tuning in and turning up the volume.

MasterChef Australia is Back to Win… very soon!

And finally, the cast for MasterChef Australia: Back To Win has been finally revealed and seems like it is in production at the moment, if not imminently beginning. We guessed about 50% of the cast in this prediction post from last September. For those new here it is our favourite TV cookery competition - and the best of the entire global MasterChef franchise - and we plan to follow along this upcoming series and share our thoughts and reactions in our side podcast Under Bench Staples. More on that soon!

That’s it for this month — thanks for reading! Chip Paper is brought to you by Patrick Hanlon and Russell Alford, AKA ‘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