Good Food Spilling Out Into The Dublin “Villages” – Artisan Parlour Ringsend

There is a huge foodie shift happening in Dublin at the moment and it involves people staying within their own "village" to find great food. You can trace the trend back to Ranelagh who set the bar so high with about 30 restaurants in one main street but more relevant is the food scene in London or New York. People don't want to travel huge distances into busy city centres to get food unless it is at the weekends or for special occasions. The problem in Dublin is that most of what local villages offered was total rubbish up until recently. Too often your choice locally (bar a few exceptions of course) would be between a shitty Chinese, the local spar or a pub serving toasties that have been in a plastic bag for a week. Faced with those options most people make the trek to town, or worse still, shopping centres like Dundrum.

Luckily change is happening. Great local restaurants are popping all over the place. The Fumbally in D8, Slice in D7, Mulberry gardens in D4 and Mayfield deli out in Terenure. They are all friendly family eateries in places you wouldn't expect to find them, and the good news is there is another one to add to the list in the form of The Artisan Parlour and grocery in Ringsend. It isn't quite in the trendy area of the docks nor is it in Dublin's nicest village, Sandymount, but instead it is nestled in the heart of the traditional village of Ringsend which has been up until recently void of good food choices, with either a Spar or Centra providing the culinary delights.

This is my sort of place. Half grocery store with loads of great goodies and half coffee shop with a small menu thrown in. It is simple Irish cooking in the most modern sense without the bullshit of having to make paninis just to sound exotic. I had a good old plain simple toasted ham sandwich. Sounds boring but when you consider the fact that it was actual flaky ham hock with some lovely mustard gratin on top, it was a delight. Add in a couple of fresh salads with beetroot and green beans and all was good. Why did it take us all this long to realise we could actually cook ourselves and not have to just try and copy foreign dishes? The days of buying in bags of pre peeled and chopped potatoes from a factory in Dundalk and deep frying them and calling them chips are gone. We are better than that.

They'll do great trade in here from all the fancy local tech companies like Airbnb that aren't big enough to have their own chefs yet for lunch. For the most part though this is a community place. A place to say "fuck going into town, lets go down the local and get some good food there". Dublin food scene is continuously getting better as good cafés push out into the suburbs, and that is a good thing for us all.