As the latest Michelin stars dropped, our critic was lunching at the long-standing, 2-star Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud in Dublin
Slow cooked suckling pig, spring cabbage, black garlic pineapple condiment. Photo: Lucinda O’Sullivan
Today at 03:30
As Michelin was preparing to dole out its 2024 stars, with all the young bucks chomping at the bit in anticipation of a rubber-tyre accolade (not deterred by the fact that a number of starred or bibbed restaurants had shut up shop or dumped their stars in favour of less-confining casual dining), I was having lunch in Ireland’s longest-standing Michelin restaurant 48 hours before. Some might say it’s the ‘Daddy of them all’ — the 2-star Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud (RPG) on Upper Merrion Street.
Opened in 1981 by Parisian-born Patrick Guilbaud in St James’s Place off Baggot Street, RPG achieved its first star in 1988, gaining even more star power in 1996, before moving to its present home within the Merrion Hotel. This is old-school-posh plush, French-Michelin style, with elegant food and service meticulously martialled by the ever suave manager, Stéphane Robin, where you rub shoulders with many well-known faces; from visiting firemen to sports stars and politicians galore, famous financiers and wealthy ‘ladies who lunch’ — who, as Joan Rivers said of their New York equivalents, are busy discussing their fifth husbands!