Joe McNamee: My preview of the year ahead in restaurants
Ireland is by now firmly on the Michelin map, the august fine dining guide bringing its stellar roadshow to Dublin in February to dole out the next round of stars Picture: iStock.
Most of us welcome a new year as a chance to scrub the slate clean and make a fresh start but, after the chaos of 2025, you’d be forgiven for viewing the year ahead, in food and in general, with some trepidation.
I am ever more convinced that the food world is fracturing into two distinct thematic approaches. One is dictated by an increasingly frantic world of diminishing attention spans in eternal pursuit of the next dopamine hit. In the food world, that presents as an insatiable appetite for the next novelty trend or fad, wild new flavour combinations or dishes that have all the longevity and substance of a TikTok video, before pleasure turns hollow and the desperate quest for the next hit continues.
