Richmond

Restraint before garnish

A crisp edge matters before the garnish does, and Richmond in Portobello, Dublin, keeps the plate close to its ingredients. Head Chef David O'Byrne leads the kitchen, working with owner and manager Russell Wilde, and the two of them are credited with bringing the space back to life as a neighbourhood room. The cooking is contemporary Irish with European influences, rooted in seasonal Irish ingredients rather than in a borrowed idiom.

The room carries a Bib Gourmand and a compact, seasonal way of cooking, which is a harder combination than it sounds. A short menu that changes with the season gives a kitchen nowhere to rest: every plate is either current or it is off the board. Splitting the work between a head chef at the pass and an owner on the floor is what lets a neighbourhood restaurant hold that standard through a full week of service.

Limited choices, held tightly

Richmond’s menu works through à la carte, tasting menu, and prix fixe formats, but the kitchen’s character comes from control rather than range. The signatures point to weight and finish: halibut, ox cheek, sticky toffee pudding. The cooking is modern, with Irish produce and European influence doing the quiet work underneath, and the Bib Gourmand matters here as a measure of proportion. Good food, held to value, without relaxing the standard.

The method shows in dishes built around contrast. Hake can take mustard, capers, anchovies, Jerusalem artichoke, and sweetcorn sauce because each element has a job. Slow-cooked veal haunch carries richness that needs swede, potato terrine, pear purée, and pesto to keep it in line. Duck, when it appears with glazed leg, golden beetroot, potato fondant, and cherry, depends on sequence: fat, sweetness, starch, acidity. The restaurant keeps a curated wine program beside that food, not as decoration, but as a way of giving the plate another edge.

The room just off the rush

The room is intimate, low-lit, and close enough to the counter that service feels measured by steps rather than distance. Richmond sits in a former shop conversion on Richmond Street South, near Camden Street, with the worn warmth of a neighbourhood dining room rather than the polish of a hotel floor. The pass has to carry both versions of the place: a relaxed room for locals and couples, and a kitchen expected to send out fine dining structure without making the evening stiff.

That is where the discipline matters. Conversational noise lets the table stay with the food; warm decor softens the precision coming from the kitchen. A plate of ox cheek can arrive with enough depth for a cold Dublin evening, then the room moves on to the next table, the next pour, the next spoon through sticky toffee pudding.