Dublin - The Winding Stair, Dillingers

Work travelling: discuss. As with all travelling, there's a certain element of tiredness and irritation and inconvenience. Except to make it more fun, they're people you work with rather than people you've chosen to be away with! The main perks are: generally shorter hours. (Except that this is offset by the fact that you have no social life to speak of.) The other is expensed food in a new place. The main negatives are obvious but I'll add a personal one in: someone threw a cup of what we think was chicken soup outta the window and it landed on my head. It was, admittedly, hilarious. However, it would've been more so if it had happened to someone else. So, where did we eat in Dublin?

The first night we went to The Dean. It has a pretty great rooftop but eating downstairs was an error. The chicken was dry, the rub mediocre. The chips were nothing special and the slaw was shop bought. Unimpressed. Thankfully, the trajectory was up up up from there. On the second night, it took ages to work out where to eat and eventually we settled on Dillingers. It looked quite hipster and like there would be benches and shared tables inside - the menu looked kind of American niche too. I wasn't in the mood for that vibe. But then  when the food came: oh my god. I think this is definitely a top ten eating experiences of my life sorta place. To start we had beef and gubeen nuggets - so tender, falling apart, carefully crumbed and insanely delicious. Tuna tostadas were scintillatingly fresh and limy. The 'wangs' I can't remember but that's probably because I was so blown away by the other starters. I went for coconut shrimp and grits to follow. This is in my to five dishes. It was so complex and had so much going on. The shrimps were MASSIVE and had that lovely soft kind of sucky prawn texture. They sat on a plate of corn which had a texture somewhere between soup and cous cous. That sounds horrid but it wasn't. There was coconut running through it which worked well with the prawns but then there was a chilli tomato sauce to bring it all together and take it back to Southernville. It was great. 

The next night we went to The Winding Stair. It speaks volumes that my veal Milanese there was as memorable as my shrimp and grits. Phenomenally thick, meaty and moist. I was so far from finishing my food and I've been sad and thought about that every time I've been hungry since.