The Best Places to Eat Near Thyme, by the Record
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The bright green interior in Athlone has been packing tables for long enough that regulars stop reading the menu before they sit down. This is a neighbourhood restaurant doing modern Irish cooking with genuine care: local produce, seasonal menus, and a glazed ham hock with crispy hen's egg that never seems to leave, probably because nobody lets it. The service is warm without being performative. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.
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Rank 2. George V Restaurant
Modern French
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Rank 3. LIGИUM
Wood-fired Italian
A wood-fired tasting menu restaurant tucked into a modern barn conversion in rural Galway, the kind of place where someone has thought to put throws on the chairs and the fire is actually doing the cooking. The menu is a surprise, shaped by the chef's Irish and Italian roots, so Amalfi lemon might show up alongside Galway lobster. It holds a Michelin star, which makes the Scandinavian-barn-in-Connacht setting feel even more pleasantly unlikely.
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The consommé arrives clear as glass and tastes like it was made from pure concentration of will. This is the one-Michelin-starred restaurant inside a famously restored Regency manor, and the dining room earns its setting rather than hiding behind it. The kitchen has a particular gift for broths and sauces, the kind that make you slow down mid-course. Service is warm without being theatrical, which, in a room this grand, takes some doing.
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Rank 5. The Oarsman
Seafood
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An eight-seat communal table and an open kitchen island set the scene at this intimate rural tasting menu restaurant in County Kildare, where the chef runs the whole show with four rooms upstairs if you'd rather not drive home afterward. The menu leans inventive and seasonal, leaning on Irish produce, and the handmade crockery and locally crafted leather pieces suggest someone thought carefully about every surface in the room.