The Best Bread and Butter in Ireland You Must Try Before You Die
Words: Hannah Lemass & Maggie Fagan
Words: Hannah Lemass & Maggie Fagan
Bread and butter is the essence of an Irish person’s life force. It is more than just a small snack to start a meal.
It is always there for us at breakfast, lunch and dinner. It is a comforting treat, a sustaining snack and often the best part of any meal. Does anything truly compare to the burst of excitement that runs through the nervous system when a basket of fresh, warm bread and butter is placed before you in a restaurant?
Sometimes it reaches next level, almost a spiritual experience. The offerings in this list take the simple idea of a bread and butter service and inject it with something mystical, sending it into the stratosphere of deliciousness.
Some are so good you might wish every course was simply another round of bread.
Kicky’s
From the moment Kicky’s opened, people were obsessed with their bread snack that went viral in the Dublin restaurant scene. Their 72 hour potato focaccia is served warm (always a plus) alongside a whipped carbonara butter made with pecorino romano, parmigiana Reggiano, all topped off with Peter Hannan’s crispy guanciale. It is the definition of naughty, and we are here for it.
The Oak Room
True to Head Chef Mike Tweedie’s devotion to the celebration of exceptional Irish produce, the bread course here is far from an afterthought. Abernathy butter from County Armagh takes centre stage, including a beautifully savoury dulse seaweed blend. It is the perfect partner to onion seed potato bread while the salted butter is a match for the kitchen’s house made organic sourdough. This bread service truly sets the tone for the craftsmanship and attention to detail that define the rest of your meal.
Dede
Photography: Ayla Hunt
Dede truly has something unique up their sleeve when it comes to bread service. Like the rest of the menu, this course is a perfect showcase of creative modern Turkish flavours. Stunningly buttery traditional pogca bread, finished with sesame seeds, is served alongside a rich paste of dried tomatoes and Turkish black olives, with cold pressed premium olive oil for dipping. It is a perfect encapsulation of what this two starred Michelin restaurant is all about, and what makes it so special.
Chapter One by Mickael Viljanen
Post snacks and pre first course, Chapter One graces diners with a trio of breads that we are calling the holy trinity.
The laminated Guinness Brioche is a thing of absolute beauty that belongs in a food museum. The ultra thin layers of expertly laminated brioche shatter, crisp, and crunch (the grown up equivalent of snap crackle and pop).
Their Sobacha Shokupan (japanese milk bread) is the fluffiest pull apart mini loaf that we would happily swap for our pillows and was guarded with our lives for mopping up future meal sauce.
The Rye & Caraway sourdough was the perfect vessel for their seaweed butter – a beautiful silky spread, which between that and the pickled shallot fromage blanc, we never wanted this course to end. Honestly if the whole meal was this bread course, we’d still cough up the cash.
The Morrison Room
If you believe the bread service should continue for the whole meal, we agree, and so does the team at The Morrison Room at Carton House Fairmont. Adam Nevin’s world-class kitchen serves simple but expertly executed breads such as caramelised onion brioche and sourdough focaccia, paired with Glenilen butter. They also offer a variety of breads to accompany specific dishes as the meal progresses. Each one is carefully curated to complement the dish and act as the perfect dipping vessel for their incredible sauces. Menus change regularly, but highlights have included a mini loaf of Japanese milk bread served alongside turbot in a chicken butter sauce. This is what Michelin-level bread and butter looks like.
St Francis Provisions, Kinsale
While it may look like a paint-by-numbers bread meets olive oil, St. Francis’ Provisions in Kinsale’s bread course feels more like a religious experience. The recipe was passed down from Sarah Walsh who has since gone on to open up two bakeries in Sydney. Made in house, their focaccia might be the fluffiest, bubbliest, cloud-like piece of bread we’ve come across on this island so far. The ratio of crunch to fluff is unparalleled, and while this bread is easy to get right, it’s rare to find it made on expert mode. Coupled with a very high quality olive oil, this is the finest example of simple ingredients + a whole lot of skill = food nirvana.
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