Category: Travel and food

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Allta – my standout meal of 2025

When reflecting on 2025 there was one meal I knew deserved its own post. I have long followed Allta’s story and been really keen to visit. I am glad that I was able to make it happen in 2025. Allta has moved around Dublin in the last few years and is now settled in the docks area. what hasn’t changed is Allta’s focus on time and place and championing Irish produce. From the moment we arrived to the moment we left we experienced the very best in hospitality from front of house to numerous chefs visiting our table, making us feel so welcome and taking us on a journey celebrating the very best of Irish produce. We even had the opportunity to see the raw ingredients as the meal began.

Allta offers a 12 course seasonal tasting menu with a range of snacks followed by bread, fish, meat and sweet courses. The food was exciting, clever and most of all delicious; so much skill and creativity poured in to every dish. What made it even more special was being able to engage with the very chefs who made the dishes. This is a meal that will live long in the memory.

The menu:

Monally’s heritage carrot, smoked velvet cloud sheep’s yoghurt, sunflower seed and squid, guanciale and shiso doughnut

bbq red shrimp, peanut and green chilli koji butter

wicklow venison tataki, cacao and coffee miso, damson

polpetta di sarde and parker house bread, truffle and toasted yeast jersey butter

hand dived scallop, smoked malone’s raspberry hot sauce, green tomato nam pla, bbq corn

salt baked beetroot, glenidan farm cobnut, blackcurrant, tarragon 

bbq ray wing, native shrimp sabayon, pumpkin seed, black garlic, january king, padron

dermot’s oxford sandy and black pork, clam xo, smoked bone marrow, pear, merguez

glenidan farm sea buckthorn, buttermilk icecream, ginger

apple and canelé bread and butter pudding

petits fours – hazelnut and coriander bonbon, juniper and sloe berry tart

We finished our meal with an incredible dessert wine – 2015, ‘anam üll’, apple icewine, slane valley, Ireland

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My 10 Stand out dishes of 2025

Every year I like to reflect on my favourite dishes of the year. Here are the top 10 of 2025

Stand out dish 1 – the oxtail giouvetsi, bone marrow, beef fat pangrattato at Oma

Stand out dish 2 – char siu pork, spice roast pineapple, sesame & ginger at Skosh

Stand out dish 3 – pork belly with gochujang miso tahini and cured egg yolk at Babushka evenings

Stand out dish 4 – ash baked sweet potato, wildflower vinegar & wild lemon labneh at the Fodder Lughnasadh feast

Stand out dish 5 – wood roast half chicken with Café de Paris butter, morels and baby leeks with a side of duck fat fries at Dove

Stand out dish 6 – Phuket style soy braised pork with hom mali rice at Kolae

Stand out dish 7 – purple heritage carrots at Black Wheat Club evenings

Stand out dish 8 – kale borani with flat bread at Capparelli at the Mill

Stand out dish 9 The rotisserie chicken and gravy at Capparelli at the Mill. this year was definitely the year of the roast chicken!

Stand out dish 10 – brussel sprout pakoras with salted mango, lime and cumin at Skosh

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2025 Food Memories

2025 was a much quieter year for me in terms of food adventures but it still brought new places and some old favourites.  We’ve continued to explore London and at the beginning of the year we finally got to Oma in London just before their Michelin star was announced.  We also had the chance to visit Darjeeling, Luna, Kolae, Dove, Kricket and have dim sum in Chinatown.

We’ve been back to Donegal a couple of times and managed to tick Bar Fisk off the list.  As always we included a visit to Scarpellos on the way home.

We’ve tried a few new places in Belfast including Frankys Lasagneria, Margot, Pica, Seoul Food Studio and the much anticipated Capparelli’s at the Mill.  We also made sure we snuck in a couple of visits to one of our favourites – Yugo.

We had a few visits to Dublin, went on a pizza trawl and had the meal of the year at Allta. We even managed 3 visits for Wine and cheese at Loose Canon = 🎉

I’ve continued to seek out bakeries wherever I go and the highlight was getting my hands on a Roundhouse Bakery Panettone just in time for Christmas.

As in other years there were the constants:

Numerous visits to Middletown coffee which always includes a hash brown stack.

Brunch at Fodder as part of our days out to the coast and forest walks.

Hot sandwiches at Lightfoot. The highlights of Lightfoot this year being the moulin rouge with cafe de Paris butter, the Po Boys, the lobster rolls and the Christmas sandwich!

Pizza at Flout

Curry at the Viceroy

Coffee at coffee rustler, Copeland distillery, babushka, Fidela and Kiosk

A Dishoom breakfast when in London

And when in York goats cheese poached eggs at Black Wheat Club and making sure we visit Skosh when we can!

All in all its been another good year. Here is to more good eating in 2026.

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Frivolitea on tour in Iceland – The Reykjavik Food Walk

I know I’ve said before that food was not the focus of our trip to Iceland but when I discovered that there was a walking food tour of Reykjavik I knew it would be the best way to see the city and an excuse to eat lots of food. Not that I ever really need an excuse…

We met our guide Egill outside the magnificent Harpa concert hall at lunchtime just as the sun began to make an appearance.

From the moment Egill spoke I knew that we were in for a real treat. His passion for his city and for food shone through immediately. I discovered later that it was Egill who started the Reykjavik Food Walk after leaving a job in journalism. I’m so glad he had the idea and drive to do it. I’m not sure we would have really got beneath the surface of Reykjavik without him.


Our first stop was at Islenski Barinn ( Icelandic Bar) for traditional lamb soup. Boy did we start with a bang, that lamb soup was off the chart and we could not refuse seconds. It reminded me a lot of the soups my mum makes as it used barley and seasonal root vegetables. It is amazing that something so simple can be so packed full of flavour and the lamb was so rich and soft. The bar keep family traditions alive by making a different family recipe every day.

We next headed on to Skolavordustigur, the street leading up to Hallgrimskirkja (the famous church)

and visited a delicatessen called Osta Budin to try a selection of Icelandic cheeses and meats.

Making cheese is relatively new in Iceland, starting in earnest in 1955 and although there are 5 x more sheep than humans on Iceland they only make cheese with cows milk. We had an Icelandic version of Gouda, Camembert and blue cheese and there was a selection of cured sheep fillet with rosemary, thyme and fennel, smoked goose fillet with a raspberry champagne vinegar and horse fillet. This was the moment of the tour with the moral dilemma. There was a mixed reaction in the group but Egill explained the context of Icelandic cuisine and why it was part of the tour.

Next we moved on a little cafe called Cafe Loki right opposite Hallgrimskirkja. The owner lives behind the church and takes a photo every day displaying them on the walls of the cafe. The cafe serves traditional Icelandic cuisine but what we tried was something that no other cafe does. Rye bread ice cream. Such an unusual idea but it really works. The crispy rye bread bits give wonderful flavour and texture and the rhubarb caramel that was served with it was divine. The owner makes the rye bread on site and uses yesterday’s rye bread for the ice-cream.

We then had a wander through the old town, by the pond and the cathedral ( much less impressive looking than Hallgrimskirkja)

admiring the vibrant street art along the way

and then headed to the old harbour to a restaurant called Kopar for a seafood soup. The restaurant is known for its rock crab which they get from the coastline north west of Reykjavik. They are the only seafood restaurant at the harbour that serves it and the soup was made with the rock crab, bean sprouts and spinach which I thought was an unusual choice but really worked. The soup was very much like a bisque and we had sourdough bread with an Icelandic violet and liquorice butter on the side. The butter was a revelation being both sweet and salty. My head said it shouldn’t work but it did.

You’d think at this point we couldn’t squeeze anymore food in but next up was the famous hotdog stand of Reykjavik. It has been serving hotdogs for 80 years and is a favourite of locals and tourists alike. The lamb hotdog is served with raw onions, crispy onions, a mustardy ketchup made with apples and a sort of dill mayonnaise. Really really tasty hotdog and the crispy onions, they were soooo good. So. So. Good.

Our last stop on the tour was at Apotek, an upmarket restaurant in the city, somewhere you go for cocktails and fine dining. Apotek also has their own bakery in the building and pastry chefs making beautiful patisserie and that is what we had to mark the end of the tour. A dessert so beautiful I didn’t want to eat it, just gaze at it. The chocolate mousse rose had raspberry gel hidden in the middle and was accompanied by blood orange sorbet. It was exquisite.


And so it was the end of the tour. We took our group photos and Egill gave us a treat of Icelandic chocolate and some Skyr to take away with us so that the tour lasted a little longer. What I particularly love about a food tour is not only learning about the places that locals eat and the traditions and tastes of the city but it’s also an opportunity to meet people from all over the world who are also exploring a place for the first time. We met people from Ireland, Canada and America. Some who had got off the plane without any sleep and came straight on the food tour, knowing it was the best way to experience Reykjavik. I have to say I admired them for being so full of life and making the tour lots of fun.

I’m now eager to return to Reykjavik, to explore more and go to all the places Egill recommended. Egill brought Reykjavik and Icelandic cuisine alive. Thank you Egill we had an absolute blast.

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Frivolitea on tour in Iceland – Hotel Ranga

I have to admit that food was not the driver for visiting Iceland. I wasn’t sure what to expect. We booked the chef’s choice menu at our hotel really so that we knew the costs before we arrived. Iceland is very expensive and eating out in particular hits the wallet.

However I was blown away by the food. We discovered that the great thing about the chef’s choice menu was that you got to eat a range of things from the menu throughout your stay ranging from the cheaper to the more expensive dishes and the chef selects them to show the best of local and seasonal ingredients.
The starters we had during our stay were:
Lightly cured salmon in lemon with smoked trout roe, fennel and dill vinaigrette and egg yolk

Wild mushroom soup with assorted mushrooms and pickled local mushrooms ( I forgot the photo of that one!)
And on the last night a dish I had been hoping would appear: reindeer carpaccio. Melting in the mouth with Parmesan and truffle oil giving an added sense of decadence.


I only made one swap throughout our stay swapping mushroom soup to ensure I didn’t miss out on the cauliflower starter that particularly intrigued me.
Cooked and roasted cauliflower with celeriac purée, pickled red onion and buttermilk dill sauce.


The main courses were particularly interesting. On the first night we had pan fried chicken breast with potato purée, rhubarb chutney, onion and black pepper sauce. I was unsure of how the chutney would work but it did.


The second night we had Icelandic lamb, one of the more expensive on the menu, and a particular highlight for us both. The flavour of the lamb was simply incredible and it was cooked to perfection.
Pan fried fillet of lamb with green pea cream, green peas, carrots, carrot purée, potato foam and brown cheese sauce.


On the last night we had Salmon sous vide with celeriac purée, watercress vinaigrette, herb mayonnaise and kale. I have never been serve such a large piece of salmon before and it just melted in the mouth. The Hotel sits beside the largest salmon fishing river in Iceland so it seemed fitting to eat salmon on our last night. The watercress vinaigrette added a wonderful sharpness to the dish.


Each night our main courses were accompanied by 2 side dishes. Potatoes with dill butter and barley in a dill sauce. The dill butter was rather addictive and the barley went surprisingly well with all of the meat and fish we had, providing an almost nutty flavour and texture to our dishes.

The desserts were like all the other dishes beautifully presented and showed great attention to detail though not highlighting Icelandic ingredients in quite the same way.
The carrot sorbet with the carrot cake however was a lovely surprise.
Carrot mousse with carrot cake, roasted coconut and carrot sorbet.


Chocolate mousse with sea berry purée, chocolate wax and milk ice-cream.

Though it wasn’t the reason for our trip or our stay at Hotel Ranga, the food we ate there will stay with me for a long time.

Oh and I forgot to mention that one of the breakfast options was make your own waffles! Little jugs of batter, waffle machines, a range of toppings. EVERY hotel should have this.