The Best Places to Eat and Drink in Ballsbridge & around

On the second floor of the Fitzwilliam Hotel, with St Stephen's Green spread out below, Glovers Alley is a Michelin-starred fine dining room done in soft pinks and greens with a quiet 1930s undercurrent. The cooking goes the other direction: bold flavors, confident technique, and just enough creative pressure on the classics to remind you someone in the kitchen has something to prove.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended

A gilt barrel ceiling and hand-crafted marquetry set the scene in this Georgian townhouse, which has been Dublin's French fine dining institution for so long the silverware probably has feelings. The cooking is French at heart but carries a quiet, assured modernity, letting bold Irish ingredients do most of the talking. The baba flambé, finished tableside with your choice of rum, is a reminder that this kitchen holds two Michelin stars and knows exactly what it's doing.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Stars
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

The original plasterwork and high ceilings of this restored landmark building make an unlikely backdrop for a tightly focused modern tasting-menu restaurant, but the contrast works. The chef, Australian-born and well-traveled, builds a surprise menu that pulls techniques and flavors from across the globe into dishes that are as considered as they are precise. Counter seats let you watch the plating up close. It holds a Michelin star.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A glass-fronted, Michelin-starred restaurant near the canal in the Dublin suburbs, where the tables closest to the open kitchen fill up first for good reason. The cooking is restrained in the best sense: fine ingredients handled with confidence and left largely alone. A tasting menu is the way to go, and the room has a quiet, unhurried elegance that makes a long dinner feel like the obvious choice.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

The cocktail menu arrives as a hardback book, illustrated in the style of the Savoy Cocktail Book, with around 70 drinks inside. VCC is a cocktail bar tucked into Crown Alley, dressed in Victorian furnishings that lean somewhere between charming and chintzy, like a very stylish relative's parlour. The drinks are the whole point, and the list is taken seriously enough that you should probably arrive with time to read it properly.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

The menu reads like a French bistro flashcard, with pâté, rillettes, and au poivre doing the work before you've even ordered. Forêt is a French restaurant sitting, somewhat absurdly, above an Irish pub on Leeson Street, and the team from Forest Avenue next door runs it with enough conviction that the whole thing holds together. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the cooking earns that quiet confidence.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Dublin, Ireland

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Dublin, Ireland

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Dublin, Ireland

Library Street is a buzzy contemporary sharing-plates spot tucked into Dublin 2, where the vibe does as much work as the food. Think communal high tops and beautifully worn old ash tables surrounded by a crowd that's genuinely happy to be there. The menu shifts regularly and leans into bold local flavours, swinging between bright, fresh plates and something more hearty and Irish. Order a few things, grab a drink, and settle in.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Dublin, Ireland

The name is a mystery and the menu is an open flame. This fire-cooking restaurant on Camden Street runs on both charcoal and wood, sending smoky aromas through a room designed for groups settling into booths with a spread of shared plates. The sirloin on the bone is the kind of thing people come back for, and the burnt end rendang spring rolls have earned their place on the permanent shortlist.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Dublin, Ireland

A wine bar turned bistro on Fenian Street, Note has a subtle retro feel and a menu that changes daily, pulling from the Mediterranean for its flavors. The cooking is unfussy, the wines skew natural and organic, and the team at the long counter will happily talk you through both. The kind of place where the room is relaxed enough that you don't feel rushed into a decision, which is fortunate given how good the wine list sounds.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Dublin, Ireland

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Dublin, Ireland

Wine on tap and a counter overlooking an open kitchen set the scene at this buzzy small-plates spot tucked into a Drury Street carpark. The cooking is globally influenced and precise without taking itself too seriously, the kind of food where the details land quietly rather than being announced. The Michelin Guide has given it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks. Friendly enough that you'll probably stay for one more cocktail than you planned.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Bright lights, loud music, and a menu you tick off at the table set the tone at this lively small-plates spot on Aungier Street. The kitchen pulls from China and Taiwan, turning out dumplings, bao buns, and xiao chi with a freshness that keeps the room moving fast. The Michelin Bib Gourmand says something about what you're getting for the price. Come hungry, come in a group, and tick generously.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A red neon sign is the only thing giving this discreet Portobello neighbourhood restaurant away from the street. Inside, exposed brick walls and red leather banquettes sit in soft light with smooth jazz running underneath, and the mood is genuinely cosy without trying too hard. The seasonally changing menu leans into bold combinations, wild sea bass with prawn Bourguignon being the kind of thing that sounds unlikely and then makes complete sense. A Michelin Bib Gourmand.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Counter seats overlooking the kitchen fill first at this buzzy Spanish restaurant on Aungier Street, and you can see why. The menu moves from snacky nibbles through unfussy mains that carry more depth than they let on, and the drinks list is quietly serious, with a dedicated sherry section and an all-Spanish wine selection covering the whole country. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the bill stays friendly enough that ordering another round feels reasonable.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

You ring a plain black doorbell on a nondescript Harry Street entrance, then ride up to a first-floor dining room where foliage hangs from the ceiling and a favela mural covers the wall. It's a tasting menu restaurant fusing Irish produce with Brazilian flavours, and the chef's story is woven into every corner, including the name itself. A genuinely different night out in a city that can feel samey.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Wood panelling and a compact room on a quiet lane in the city centre, Comet is a small, intimate restaurant pulling from the Mediterranean and whatever's good closer to home. The kitchen leans into restraint, letting things like a bowl of ripe baby tomatoes in their own juices carry the evening. Liver parfait with fermented blood orange is a strong opening move. It fills up, so the room has a proper hum to it most nights.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

What was once a Victorian grocer's clerk's snug is now a glass-enclosed private dining room, which tells you everything about this place's bones. Delahunt is a modern Irish restaurant on Camden Street with genuine atmosphere and cooking that leans hard on Irish produce. James Joyce namechecked the building in Ulysses, so the ghosts are literary ones. The Sitting Room upstairs handles drinks before or after.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A snack and a glass of sherry to open is the kind of move that tells you exactly what this small, charming restaurant near the National Gallery is about. The chef's training is classical French, but the cooking has a quiet modern edge running through it. The room is compact enough that the attentive service never feels impersonal, and the menu changes with the seasons rather than the trends.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Jean-Georges Vongerichten planted his flag in Dublin with this top-floor fine dining restaurant inside The Leinster hotel, where two terrace bars frame a panoramic city skyline before you even sit down. The menu roams broadly, from his signature egg toast with caviar to crab spring rolls, with Irish produce threading through all of it. The kind of room where the view competes with the food, and the room usually wins the first round.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Squid ink rice that needs a long head start arrives at the table dark, fragrant, and worth the wait. La Gordita is a snug Spanish tapas spot on Montague Street, with a narrow room, wooden floors, and leather banquettes that soften into a genuinely lively evening. The menu runs long enough that coming alone feels like a tactical error, and the friendly service makes ordering round after round feel like someone else's idea.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Red leather banquettes and large murals fill what used to be a bank vault, giving this cellar restaurant a warm, members-club feel that the original architects certainly didn't intend. The cooking draws on Irish produce but wanders freely around the continent, landing somewhere between a French bistro and an Italian trattoria without committing to either, which turns out to suit it fine.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The neon red signs and striped canopies on Trinity Street are hard to walk past without stopping, which is probably the point. Inside this French brasserie, checkerboard floors and the low roar of two busy rooms set the tone. The cooking leans classic and full-flavoured, French in spirit but built on Irish produce. The wine list runs well past France's borders, and ordering by the pichet feels less like a gimmick than the obvious move.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A tall, narrow townhouse overlooking Trinity College Park, The Pig's Ear is a sit-down Irish restaurant where the menu reads like someone raided a grandmother's recipe tin and a history archive on the same afternoon. The chef digs into old-school Irish cooking without playing it safe, so boxty pancakes and suet puddings show up alongside lobster omelette. Comfort food, but with a raised eyebrow.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Foliage and soft lighting give this wood-fired Neapolitan pizza spot the feel of a neighborhood pizzeria that also happens to look good. The team trained under Enzo Coccia, and the modern Neapolitan style shows: classics executed cleanly, toppings shifting with the season. It ranks on the 50 Top Pizza World list, which is about as serious as pizza credentials get. The drink list holds its own, and the staff, many of whom started as servers, treat the room accordingly.

1. 50 Top Pizza #82 · 50 Top Pizza World
2. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Europe Excellent Pizzerias

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Dublin, Ireland

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Dublin, Ireland

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Dublin, Ireland

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Dublin, Ireland

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Dublin, Ireland

A narrow wine bar on Drury Street where the shelves are stacked with bottles from small natural producers and the daytime menu runs a cheese toastie that has no business being as good as it is. After half five it's charcuterie and cheese plates only, which is a perfectly reasonable consolation. The by-the-glass list changes often enough that regulars rarely order the same thing twice.

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Dublin, Ireland

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Dublin, Ireland

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Dublin, Ireland

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Dublin, Ireland

A halva brownie with a crisp edge and a gooey center is doing a lot of the talking here. Tang is a casual dinner spot leaning into Middle Eastern and North African flavors, the kind of place where smoky mushroom shawarma and lamb kofta in Moroccan tomato sauce land on the table without the bill requiring a quiet moment of grief afterward. The room fills fast, and the menu makes it easy to order more than planned.

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Dublin, Ireland

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Dark panelling runs floor to ceiling, the shutters stay half-drawn, and the gold lettering on the built-in cabinets is the kind of detail someone spent real money on. This cocktail bar on Dawson Street occupies a building with a wig-making past, and the room leans into it without tipping into costume. Worn floorboards, vintage bar, no natural light to speak of. The sort of place that makes you order a second drink before you've finished deciding on the first.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

Wicker lampshades hang over the long bar, with polished concrete underfoot and an ebony screen separating drinkers from the dining room behind. This is the cocktail bar inside a contemporary Thai-Vietnamese restaurant tucked behind the Westbury Hotel. The name translates as "happy meeting place," which the room seems committed to delivering. The chef's résumé includes cooking for the Thai royal family, which is one way to set expectations at the bar.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

Sixteen framed letters from US presidents with Irish heritage line the walls of this basement cocktail bar beneath Shanahan's steakhouse on St Stephen's Green, and yes, Clinton's is addressed to the man himself. An American opened it because Dublin lacked a decent steak house, which tracks. The room is resolutely, cheerfully American, the kind of bar that feels more Boston than Dublin, and nobody down here seems to mind one bit.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

The stained glass and towering mahogany back bar with Romanesque arches make The Palace Bar feel less like a pub and more like a church that got its priorities right. One of Fleet Street's old-school institutions, it draws a literary crowd by reputation, the kind of place that was a haunt for intellectuals long before that became a marketing strategy. The snug up front fits five people and has its own quietly dramatic history.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

The Victorian snugs up front still have their carved woodwork and whiskey-branded mirrors, exactly as they should. This is an old-school Dublin pub on Lower Baggot Street, the kind that looks modest from the pavement but extends surprisingly far back once you're in. Locals and politicians from nearby Leinster House have long made it a second office, which keeps the conversation loud and the pretension low.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Tucked off the lobby of the Shelbourne, this cocktail bar claims to have invented the Black Velvet, Guinness tipped into champagne in a tall glass, sometime in the early 1870s. London's Brooks's Club disputes that. The bar doesn't seem bothered. It's quieter and more intimate than the hotel's larger bar up front, the kind of place where you order the house claim, because obviously you do, and settle in.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Look for the carved wooden snail above the door on Fade Street, or you'll walk right past. Inside, this upstairs bar spreads across several first-floor rooms with bare floorboards, exposed brick, and original cast iron fireplaces sitting alongside bold modern artwork in a way that probably shouldn't work but does. A tent-covered terrace handles the smokers. The crowd skews young and the whole thing stays cheerfully unpolished.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The Dubliners launched their career in the cramped spot by the front window, and that corner still fills with live traditional music seven nights a week. O'Donoghues is an old-school Dublin pub on Merrion Row, the stretch locals call the Royal Mile of traditional bars, near St. Stephen's Green. Pints, fiddles, and a room that has barely changed since the O'Donoghue family converted it from a grocery shop.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The carved mahogany goes floor to ceiling, the chandeliers are cut glass, and the cornices are ornate enough to make you wonder how it stays upright. The Long Hall is an old-school Dublin pub that looks like someone commissioned a Victorian cathedral for drinking purposes. Women were served through hatches until 1951, which puts the velvet-rope arguments of modern bars in useful perspective. Order a pint and look up.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Khaki walls and utilitarian furniture across three floors on South William Street, a bar the regulars have long since shortened to "Swilly." The owners describe it as Dublin's friendliest and funkiest urban lounge, which is the kind of thing that usually invites skepticism, but the easygoing staff and the quality of the DJs make it hard to argue. A style-conscious, music-loving crowd fills it out most nights.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The address arrives by email after you book, and even then it takes some finding. That's the point: The Blind Pig is a proper speakeasy cocktail bar tucked somewhere off Wicklow Street, named for the cops who looked the other way during Prohibition. The team behind it are among Dublin's most serious bartenders, and the whole production, the secrecy, the hidden entrance, lands as atmosphere rather than gimmick.

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide