Dublin's restaurant scene is a bit of a good news/bad news situation: The good news is that the economic upswing over the last decade has brought with it a new generation of international, sophisticated eateries. The bad news is that prices are considerably more than you'd pay in a comparable U.S. city, or even in Paris or London. A combination of high taxes (the VAT on wine is 21%, and on restaurant meals it's 13.5%) and a bit of nouveau riche overenthusiasm among restaurateurs has the combined effect of making dining out memorably expensive. Luckily, you can get a cost break from the city's many cafes and tearooms, which offer sandwiches and hot lunches at reasonable prices. That category recently received a body blow, when the classic Dublin coffee shop, Bewley's, closed its flagship location on Grafton Street after 165 years in operation (although it reopened with some of its charms still intact, as a member of the rather less romantic Irish cafe chain, CaféBarDeli; it's now a full-service restaurant, not a coffee shop).
Outdoors Is the New Indoors (for a Smoke) -- While Ireland has a reputation as a hard-drinking, heavy-smoking place, in 2004 it passed a sweeping anti-smoking law, banning smoking in virtually all public spaces, including restaurants, bars, hotel lobbies; you name it. Therefore, there will be no smoking at the table, and not even any nipping into the bar for a quick drag -- those days are all over. It's out into the cold and wet if you need to indulge.
The Irish are not entirely unsympathetic to the addicted among us, and most restaurants and bars have created lavish patios and gardens, usually covered and heated, where smokers can puff away in relative comfort. In fact, one unintended outcome of the anti-smoking legislation is that Dublin has become more of an outdoor city than ever before, as outdoors is the new indoors, and the smoking patio is often the place to see and be seen.
How to Eat like an Irishman
If you've come to Dublin expecting to find plenty of restaurants still serving traditional Irish food, you're going to be disappointed. Dublin is far too chic, and Dubliners far too sophisticated, for the Irish stew, soda bread, and shepherd's pie they grew up eating. The very food you cannot escape in the Irish countryside, you cannot find in Dublin restaurants.
A number of haute cuisine restaurants do modern, upscale interpretations on Irish cooking, and places like Chapter One and Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud use only Irish ingredients in their complex dishes, for which you will pay a premium. But the simple, basic food that the Irish are known for is not really represented.
Still, you can get around this, as long as you don't mind eating in a pub. Several of the city's traditional pubs still serve plain, hearty Irish food, and as an added benefit, it's certainly much cheaper than what you'll find in the high-and-mighty restaurants. Your best options include The Porterhouse microbrewery on Parliament Street in Temple Bar, which is an excellent place for a midweek lunch of dishes like Irish stew with brown bread, or bubble-and-squeak. Not too far away, O'Shea's Merchant (12 Bridge St. Lower; tel. 01/679-3797) is one of the best places in town for real Irish food, and the Stag's Head pub is another. Both offer home-cooked, traditional food in pleasant surroundings (just don't try to eat there on busy Fri and Sat nights, when it all gets a bit crowded for comfort).
