What We're Reading, Eating & Watching | May 2023
A delicious digest of satisfying suggestions...
Hey friends, we have a LOT more of you on board this month than ever before, so if this is the first of our free monthly mailers you’re receiving, hello! If you’re new and reading this on the Substack app, pop a comment with where in the world you’re based and reading from, we’d love to know –– and for you to get to know other subscribers!
This is another edition of our free monthly digest kicking off each month shining a light on some of the best things we’ve eaten, cooked, listened to, watched/streamed or read recently that we hope will inspire you. Think of this as a ‘highlights reel’ of what we might ordinarily share on social media, jam packed full of suggestions and recommendations to keep you in the loop, and no two digests the same!
Travelling
This month we headed down to Co. Waterford for a couple of days and unexpectedly found ourselves in Dungarvan the same weekend as the West Waterford Festival of Food. We booked ourselves in to one or two events - including a gorgeous dinner by our friend
in the Dungarvan tennis club - whilst we were the lucky first guests to stay (#invite) in the Mount Congreve House & Gardens Gate Lodge. Talk about a WOW property, we shared lots of snapshots and details on Instagram and it seems like it’s mostly booked up for the year now –– including a weekend we also booked with friends! Can’t recommend it enough, especially as we have lived in a Gate Lodge in Ireland ourselves for the last five years and it gave us serious envy of all the things we could do to our little place…
Speaking of travel, Patrick - alongside our ST editors Jen and Róisín - compiled the Sunday Times 100 Best Places to Stay in Ireland during the last month. A mammoth listing of the cream of the crop of places to check in-to and check out all they offer, across the entire island. Handily it’s broken up in decades via theme/angle, like 'gourmet getaways’, ‘off the beaten track’, ‘boutique bolt holes’ and more. Hopefully readers will find it useful as a go-to bible for booking upcoming trips!
May was so busy with different family events we barely had a moment spare, but for Russell’s birthday we spent a gorgeous evening at The Fitzwilliam Hotel Dublin (#invite), which was faultless. That night we headed for dinner at One Pico –– which we’ve long known of but never been. Of course, we had to finish the night at one of our favourite pubs in the city, Kehoes.
Over in our Sunday Times Ireland restaurant review column, April was a bumper month of five Sundays so we covered two spots in Dublin, two in Northern Ireland and a re-opening of sorts in Waterford. We booked in to the brand new sibling of Las Tapas de Lola, La Gordita, we took one of the island’s worthiest detours to Wine & Brine in Moira for one of the best Sunday menus ever and we spent a Sunday service at industry hot spot Locks in Dublin 8 which missed out on the main event.
Then, back up north to picture perfect pier-side cafe Babushka before finishing the month taking a seat at The Old Couch in Waterford City, now under the ownership of three visionary chefs from Spain. Plus, don’t miss our ‘If This, Then That’ trio of suggestions to accompany each one, too. Across these five we spotlight 15 *other* places, too! We’re delighted to be so many peoples’ go-to for restaurant recommendations.
Outside of Ireland, we’ve just come back from a full week in the South of France with friends. We will be writing up our guide to where we stayed here, just for paid subscribers, you won’t want to miss it –– we’ve now been to this part of France three times over the last five or six years. Link to subscribe, from just €1 a week, below…
Watching & Listening
OBVIOUSLY a lot of Eurovision, as our favourite time of the year kicks off imminently.
Yes, it’s Eurovision season and - no - we make no apologies for it. Like it or lump it, we bloody love it and it’s a concrete pillar of our content annually. We’ll be in Liverpool from early next week ‘til the end and we’ll be sharing lots as we go plus potentially popping up with special guests. If you’re heading to Liverpool definitely bookmark our Host City Guide. Have you listened to all the competing entries yet? We’d suggest you do… Take a listen above, but in the meantime here are the five competitors we think are going to particularly light up the scoreboard in Liverpool.
Reading
Rather than us remark what we've been reading or listening to as we generally do each month, it seems a LOT of you have been reading us! We were delighted within the last couple of weeks to be remarked by
as a Featured Publication, demonstrating best practice on the platform and telling stories in a unique way. The Substack particularly enjoyed our illustrations which appoint our pieces. We've explained more in the post below if you missed it!
As ever, a little “Thanks!”
We always like to end these monthly mailers full of our top recommendations with a little thanks. Thank you for your support of Chip Paper, whether you’re a premium subscriber or just enjoying the free emails and snippets here and there –– we appreciate you!
We’ve just marked a year into our Substack journey and we think we’ve grown a nice little archive of evergreen long-reads and interesting articles, which paid subscribers have full and complete access too (working out for as little as €1 a week). Supporting via Substack is one of the simplest and most effective ways you can support our work if you’re enjoying it and want more. We want to write for YOU.
Hello guys! Now tuning in from the Hunter Valley NSW as opposed to Magners Farm Co. Tipperary 👋🏻 Kylie Magner x