Just Eat Awards Winners: How Ireland Eats
Words: Tobi Ilori
The Just Eat Awards winners for the last 12 months don’t tell you where to go for a special occasion. They tell you where people are ordering from when they’re hungry, tired and not arsed cooking.
Which, if we’re being honest, is more nights than we would like to admit.
That’s what makes the Just Eat Awards so interesting. They’re based on customer votes across Ireland, so this isn’t critics, chefs or anyone pretending to have a more refined palate than the rest of us. It’s habit. It’s routine. It’s the places people go back to because they know they’ll get fed and won’t be let down.
Over 28,800 Irish foodies casted their votes for their most loved restaurants, take-away spots and grocery outlets across 12 speciality cuisine and food occasion categories.
The full list of winners will be available via Just Eat following the official announcement. For now we’re sticking to the winners that tell us something about what the lads and ladies across Ireland are eating right now.
The Big Winner
Sano Pizza (Dublin & Cork) took both Best of Ireland and Best Pizza. With this win Sano have scooped €100k from Just Eat, to support their growth and future marketing.
That tracks with us to be very honest. Sano isn’t trying to reinvent pizza or throw twelve unnecessary toppings at you and call it innovation. It’s built around proper Neapolitan pizza. The MacHugh twin brothers opened the first Sano in temple Bar in 2018 after a trip to Naples and that influence is still all over it.
The dough is made with just flour, water, salt and yeast, fermented for at least 48 hours, then hand stretched and fired in Naples made ovens at some serious heat that will singe those new brows you spent a fortune on. The result is that softer, blistered, slightly chewy crust that feels light enough to finish without needing to sit down for small personal reflection afterwards.
That’s probably why it won. It’s simple, it’s affordable and it knows exactly what kind of pizza it wants to be. No messing. Just a very solid pie.
Dublin Doing what Dublin Does
A large chunk of this year’s winners are Dublin based.
Mad Egg, Carved, Greenville Deli and TEN10 Acai & Coffee all picked up wins across burger, lunch, healthy and breakfast categories.
Mad Egg leans hard into fried chicken the way we love it and that’s crispy, messy, a bit over the top in a way that works.
Carved does what the name suggests: slow-roasted meats, stacked sandwiches, the kind that fills you all the way up.
Greenville Delis sits on the other end of the rainbow with their lighter bowls, salads, things that make you feel like your have your life together at least for one lunch break
Then there’s TEN1O, quietly feeding the Açaí and coffee crowd who want something fresh, quick and photogenic enough to suggest they definitely did not wake up ten minutes before logging on.
None of these wins feel mad. These are places people rely on when they don’t want to take a chance. Which, in Dublin, is half the battle.
Other winners include Sitar Indian Restaurant & Takeaway and Summer Inn, which are also recognised this year.
Outside
Dublin
It’s not all centred in the capital though. There’s plenty happening outside Dublin too.
Banditos in Galway picked up Best Mexican, which makes sense if you ever arrived absolutely starving and needed a feast rather than a light bite. Big portions, bold flavours and no messing about. Park Kitchen in Sligo took Best Asian, with the kind of katsu, noodles and rice dishes that travel well and still taste like themselves by the time they land on your coffee table.
Do not eat on your bed, that’s how crumbs spread christ! Lennox’s in Cork winning Best Chipper feels less like a shock and more like Cork nodding smugly and saying “Well obviously”
Other regional winners include Izz Café in Cork and Sitar Indian Restaurant & Takeaway in Dundalk, both of which also feature in this year’s awards.
And fair enough.
Everyday Winners
Some of the winners say more about routine than anything else.
Centra taking Best Grocery & Retail is less about excitement and more about necessity. It’s where people go when they need something quickly and don’t want to overthink it.
A breakfast roll, a tasty snack, a Lucozade, maybe a jambon if the day is going especially badly. We’ve all been there.
The same goes for breakfast, lunch and healthy categories more broadly. These aren’t meals people build their week around. They’re the ones that get slotted in between everything else. A roll here. A sandwich there. Something green when guilt kicks in. Something beige when it doesn’t.
That’s where loyalty actually shows up. Not on your birthday. On a random Thursday.
The Just Eat Awards aren’t just about exciting food in Ireland. They’re also about finding the most dependable.
The places that win are the ones people return to without much thought. The ones that do the job. The ones that don’t let you down when you’re already halfway through ordering and too hungry to start again somewhere else.
If you want the full breakdown, it’ll be available via Just Eat once the announcement goes live.
If you want to understand how Ireland eats right now, don’t ask what people admire.
Ask what they order when they can’t be bothered cooking.
