Denise O'Donoghue hears from Chad Byrne, head chef at the Brehon, Co Kerry

Sprezzatura, Camden Market, Grantham St, Dublin 8. Booking via: www.sprezzatura.ie

The head of the Restaurants Association of Ireland (RAI) has hit out at the Government's plans to introduce calorie information on menus.

More than three-quarters of staff in the hospitality sector face verbal abuse on a regular basis, while more than half say they have experienced harassment or bullying.

Carolanne Rushe has a way of drawing you in. Talk of her travels and how the vertiginous mounds of aromatic spices in the Qatar souk influenced her cooking is enough to whet any appetite.

Ireland's beef farmers are not having the best time of it at the moment.

Chameleon was opened by Carol Walsh in the heart of Temple Bar 25 years ago in 1994 when the quarter had an exotic hipster feel and was still home to parts of the rag trade.

Traders in Dublin city centre will have to pay €630 a year to use sandwich boards to promote their business.

More than two thirds of children's meals in Irish and British restaurants contain more fat and saturated fat than recommended guidelines, according to new research carried out by Cork Institute of Technology (CIT) and the University of Roehampton in Britain.

here was some sad news in the restaurant world recently with the announcement that Luna was closing its doors.

Dublin has had some significant openings in recent months and more are due, but one in particular has made me very happy.

Leslie Williams went to sample the food at Sisu Izakaya in Dublin.

A fast food chain has announced plans to open 20 restaurants in Ireland over the next four years and create 600 jobs.

Joe McNamee heads to Monk's Lane in Cork to sample the old country pub.

Chef and restauranteur Seamus O’Connell is about to close his iconic Cork restaurant. He looks back on 25 years at the helm of The Ivory Tower – and reveals his new plans to Ellie O’Byrne.

The Ivory Tower restaurant in Cork City is set to close its doors after more than a quarter of a century.

When the Celtic Tiger foundered, ‘fine dining’ Greene’s was especially vulnerable but under Bryan McCarthy, they found a head chef capable of creative response, as he delivered deceptively simple, keenly-priced menus, featuring superb local, seasonal, cultivated and foraged produce, writes Joe McNamee.

Two Cork restaurants have been shortlisted for the inaugural World Restaurant Awards.

In a significant ramping up of its activities to protect Irish tourism ahead of Brexit, Fáilte Ireland will invest €5 million to support the sector.

Italy is a complicated diverse place as you probably know by now. Let’s take their wine — there are 377 indigenous grape varieties used to make commercial wine in 329 designated DOC regions — France has a mere 204 grapes followed by Spain with 84.

There are warnings some restaurants will not be able to survive increased costs coming on stream this year.

A phrase I hear on a very regular basis is “I’d love your job”. I am never so rude as to demur for any contrary suggestion comes across like Cleopatra screeching at the help that there’s too much cream in her milk bath.

Over the course of a recent weekend in Dingle at the annual food festival, I lose count of the number of people who make a point of passing on one dining tip in particular: The Fish Box (Flannery’s Seafood Bar), on Green Street.

TV chef Rachel Allen is to close her first restaurant for a €1m casual dining reinvention. Rachel’s, on Cork’s Washington St, which opened in March 2017, will close on August 8 for the eight-week revamp.

Hollywood actor Mark Wahlberg is bringing his restaurant chain to Dublin.

Locks Restaurant, 1 Windsor Terrace, Dublin 8. Tel: 01-4163655

There was a hotel perched above the harbour in Ardmore where a 10-year-old waif in woolen trunks once earned his lifesaving merit badges over the course of an endless hot summer ‘cough-mumble-mutter’ years ago but it bears scant resemblance to the current incarnation, The Cliff House Hotel, a modernistic structure not unlike a cruise liner where every single space within is designed to draw the gaze out towards the stunning sea views.

Leslie Williams samples the food at EaTokyo Noodles and Sushi Bar.

I WAS called a hipster recently — I think it was my pointy shoes with the red laces. I actually took it as a compliment despite the fact that I can’t be a hipster now that I’m in my late 40s, that sobriquet is only for the young. Dublin has many hipster hangouts but hipster central has to be the Bernard Shaw pub in Portobello — they even sell PBR (Google it along with the word ‘Hipster’).

Jamie Oliver is facing more upheaval at his restaurant empire after the celebrity chef was forced to put his Canberra restaurant into administration, leading to the likely loss of over 40 jobs.

Hundreds of jobs are to be axed at Prezzo after the restaurant chain agreed a restructuring plan that will see nearly 100 sites close.

I HAVE loved Douglas Street for decades, even living there for two mightily and joyously eventful years, but you need to be able for the heady claustrophobia that comes with this off-kilter curve of random buildings, crammed in shoulder to shoulder, most especially during the dark, wet days of winter.

Leslie Williams visits Caffe Amore in Dublin

"I thought the guide was about chefs in big fancy hotels or those trained by the great masters. But it turned out to be the opposite. It's a wonderful surprise."

Leslie Williams goes for a taste at Klaw Seafood Café, 11 Spranger’s Yard, Fownes Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2

A Dublin restaurant is booked out for months on end and not for the first time.

Hey Donna, 137 Rathmines Road, Dublin 6. Tel: 01-4913731;

He has a CV that would be the envy of any highly- regarded chef worldwide and now Patrick Murphy is bringing that experience to his new restaurant at Stoneview in Blarney, Co Cork.

One of Cork’s most popular restaurants, Fenn’s Quay, has closed. The multi-awardwinning restaurant closed its doors yesterday for the final time ending 20 years of food service.

One of Ireland’s best-known restaurants, Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud, is enjoying its best ever year.

The re-establishment of a tourism training agency is “the only show in town” to tackle a chronic shortage of qualified chefs in Ireland, an industry body has said.

Hot on the heels of the circa €4m investment sale of the former Pavilion retail unit on Cork city’s prime shopping thoroughfare, St Patrick’s Street, comes another section of the 1921-built ex-cinema.

Just in time for Easter.