Category
24 articles
In Italy, the end of dinner is only the beginning. We look at why lingering at the table — bread swiped, coffee cooling, stories still unfolding — is the most generous course of all, and why we refuse to rush you out of your seat.
Ribollita, pasta e fagioli, panzanella — Italy's greatest comfort foods were never designed, they were improvised. As food bills climb across Britain, the old cucina povera playbook turns out to be the most useful cookbook you never bought.
Relocating to Dublin is easier than it used to be, but finding genuine connection is a different matter entirely. For a growing number of British professionals, the answer has turned out to be less about the city's famous pub culture and more about a small, loud, gloriously informal Italian wine bar. Here's why the bacaro model is quietly doing what corporate networking events never could.
The buffalo mozzarella on your plate this evening left Campania less than two days ago. The olive oil was pressed in Puglia last autumn and has barely been in the country a fortnight. Getting the real thing from Italy to Dublin is a logistical act of faith — and the people doing it are considerably more interesting than the supermarket aisle would suggest.
No menu in English? No problem. The authentic bacaro experience was never really about reading a list — it was about reading the room. Here's how to walk up to the counter at Il Baccarò and feel completely at home, even when you haven't the faintest idea what half the things are called.
While British professionals are gulping down coffee on the go and eating toast over a keyboard, Italians have quietly perfected the art of the morning pause. At Il Baccarò, our Italian staff will tell you that how you start the day says everything about how you live it — and there's a lesson in that tiny espresso cup worth hearing.
There's something counterintuitive happening at the best Italian wine bars in Dublin. The more crowded, noisy, and chaotic the room, the more real the conversations seem to get. We unpick the strange psychology behind the bacaro's beautiful disorder.
British diners are trained to wait for a table. But in a Venetian bacaro, the best food goes to the people leaning against the bar. Here's why standing up might be the smartest dining decision you ever make.
Something quietly remarkable is happening at the bar in Il Baccarò. Dublin's notoriously reserved Anglo-Irish crowd is starting to talk with their hands — and they're not even embarrassed about it. Blame the wine, blame the atmosphere, or blame the Italians who brought their whole expressive selves to the city.
There's something quietly radical about a place that doesn't take reservations, doesn't care what you're wearing, and hands you a glass of wine before you've even found somewhere to stand. The bacaro — Venice's beloved neighbourhood bar — has quietly been rewriting the rules of what a good night out actually looks like. And Dublin, it turns out, was ready for it.
Britain is tired. Not the kind of tired that a good night's sleep fixes — the deep, structural exhaustion of a culture that has confused busyness with worth. Italian dining philosophy offers something quietly radical in response, and you don't have to book a flight to Naples to feel it.
In Italy, the dinner table isn't just where you eat — it's where you actually show up for each other. We asked regulars at Il Baccarò and Italian Dubliners what happens when you swap polite filler for something that actually means something.
You don't need a canal view or a marble counter to capture the spirit of a Venetian standing bar. With the right furniture, lighting, and a willingness to rethink how you host, any spare corner of a British home can become the most convivial spot on the street. Here's how we'd set it up.
Something quietly remarkable is happening in Dublin's Italian dining scene. British visitors are arriving not just for the craic, but for cured meats, natural wine, and the particular warmth of a room that doesn't rush you out the door. We look at why Dublin's Italian tables have become one of the UK's most unexpected food tourism destinations.
There's a reason guests always drift toward the kitchen — and the Venetian bacaro has understood this for centuries. Here's how to lean into that instinct and design a home space where people genuinely want to stay, slow down, and pour another glass.
Before a single bite, there is a smell. For Dublin's Italian community, certain aromas — garlic softening in olive oil, dried herbs, slow-cooked tomato — don't just signal dinner. They signal somewhere else entirely. This is the story of how scent keeps a culture alive across thousands of miles.
In a city that moves faster every year, Dublin is quietly finding its antidote to urban isolation in the most unlikely of places — a standing bar, a small plate, and a glass of something honest. The bacaro model, borrowed from Venice's centuries-old tradition, is doing something no app or co-working space ever managed: it's getting strangers to actually talk to each other.
Something remarkable is happening between the docks of Dublin and the trattorias of northern Italy. Irish producers and Italian importers are forging direct relationships that are reshaping both kitchens — and the story is far more personal than any supply chain spreadsheet could capture.
Across Dublin, a quiet but urgent project is underway. The children and grandchildren of Italian immigrants are sitting down with ageing relatives, notebooks in hand, trying to capture recipes that were never written down — before the people who carry them are no longer here to ask. What gets lost when a family's food memory fades, and what does it take to save it?
Every Italian chef working in Dublin carries something with them that never appears on any menu — a dish so personal it belongs to a different world entirely. These are the recipes passed down in whispers, written on scraps of paper, and guarded like heirlooms. We went looking for them, and found something far more interesting than just food.
Forget the basics you already know about. A genuinely Italian pantry goes deeper than olive oil and dried pasta — it's a collection of quiet, powerful ingredients that shift the entire register of your cooking. We've put together a guide to building yours, with a few tips from the suppliers who stock our own shelves at Il Baccarò.
Behind every bowl of properly made pasta or wedge of aged Parmigiano served in Dublin lies a surprisingly complex web of importers, foragers, and obsessive ingredient hunters. We follow the supply chain that connects Italian farms and artisan producers to the city's best kitchens — and meet the people who refuse to cut corners along the way.
Long before 'authentic Italian' became a marketing buzzword, real Italian families were quietly building a culinary legacy in Dublin's streets and kitchens. Their story is one of sacrifice, adaptation, and an unshakeable devotion to the table. Here's the history that most menus never mention.
Fast-casual dining promised us convenience, but somewhere along the way it stole the joy of actually eating together. Dublin's Italian dining scene — rooted in the ancient bacaro tradition of Venice — offers something quietly radical in response: time, generosity, and a table worth lingering at.