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Dublin has always been a great place to drink, whether you’re grabbing a pint at a local pub or touring the Guinness Storehouse. But these days, Dublin is where you go to eat.

“Dublin has become a more vibrant food city over the last decade,” says Catherine Cleary, food critic for the Irish Times.

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L. Mulligan Grocer

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This 20th-century Dublin pub got new owners seven years ago and was reinvented as a great place to eat. Menus arrive tucked into books, many of them children’s classics; the bill comes with a bag of candies. In between these childish bookends, the cooking is seriously grown-up, gathering brilliant Irish ingredients like Gubbeen chorizo, grass-fed free-range meat, and farmhouse cheeses together with craft beers, ciders, gins, and whiskeys all under the roof of a proper old pub.

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Oxmantown

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The streets around Oxmantown are steeped in animal history — nearby Smithfield was the city’s animal market for 300 years. But “ox” is a reference to the Viking word for east; the Eastmen were the Vikings whose stronghold was nearby. In this small place, the art of a brilliant sandwich means every element is taken seriously, like the breakfast sandwich that comes with butcher Jack McCarthy’s black pudding. Grab a stool to eat in or, on a sunny day, hop on the light rail tram from Four Courts and go west three stops to picnic at the museum at Collins Barracks.

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Fish shop

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Dublin is a city by the sea, but for many years you had to go to a high-end restaurant to get really good fish and seafood. Thankfully, that’s changing. Husband-and-wife team Peter Hogan and Jumoke Akintola met as trainee teachers in London, where they set up a street-food stall as a hobby over the long school holidays. They enjoyed it so much they quit teaching and returned to Dublin to open a fish shack in a south city market. Two years later they opened this Queen Street restaurant and then a second chip shop and wine bar on nearby Benburb Street. They only serve wild Irish fish. The set menu changes weekly according to the catch at sea, while much of the short but inspired wine list is served by the glass.

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