On your 'phone

We like the quiet life, but we don't seem capable of managing it whenever the annual Bridgestone 100 Best Guides appear. What should, we think, be an unexceptional event seems to have turned in to an annual snowball fight, with us against a series of diverse interests, from Killarney to builders to guys who turn out braised lamb shanks as if their life didn't depend on it.
With the new 2008 100 Best Guides, the snowball fight has been as intense as ever.
This is a good thing. Food in all its aspects is part of our culture, and we should be prepared to disagree and argue about our culture.
The bit that seems to gall many folk is: “Who do they think they are to call the books “The 100 Best?”
Good question. And the answer is: every year we seek out the 100 restaurants, and 100 places to stay, that are trying ever so hard to do Their best and to be Their best. That is what it means to be “The Best” – people achieving and realising their own ambitions, not people who tick critic's boxes.
There are plenty of Restaurants-by-numbers out there, but they aren't in the Bridgestones.
And Heaven help us, but we have dozens upon dozens of new hotels who all have all the stuff – the big rooms, the spa, the dining room, the cocktail bar, the golf course, all the stuff their accountants and designers told them they needed.
What they don't have is: hospitality. So they are, truly, empty vessels.
None of those in the Bridgestone 2008 Guide either.
We have also a Dublin restaurant guide for your mobile phone, on www.bridgestoneguides.com/mobile. If you bookmark it, you can have 100 destinations with all their details – and the ability to call them and make a booking – right in your pocket.
It's been created by our wonderful web team, fluidedge, folk so talented they can even reduce Bridgestone plaques to make them fit onto Nokia N95s.

Why isn't a great restaurant like Shanahan's in the Bridgestone 100 Best?

Thursday evening in Shanahan's, and the place is leppin'. It's so busy, that there are folk who are even eating downstairs in the bar, and elsewhere there isn't a table to be had. Confident, smart staff negotiate the three floors of the complex, always charming, completely in control.
The little amuse of foie gras is perfect, the trio of Irish salmon is spot on, the scallops are small but excellent, and the meats are pitch perfect – the petite filet, the New York striploin, the fine rib-eye. Side orders are simple as they should be – good mash, good creamed spinach.
So, if it's all this good and this professional, then why isn't Shanahan's top of the Bridgstone pile? If we can agree that a capital city needs big, brassy restaurants such as this – and the demand for tables on a quiet week in October shows that indeed we do – and if we can agree that they do what they do superbly, then how come they ain't critical darlings?
Simply because the nature of a big, brassy restaurant such as this means that there isn't room for any true individuality to shine though, and that is what the Bridgestone Guides are about. We are after the quirky, the maverick, and you can't run a big operation such as Shanahan's in that fashion. We respect what they do at Shanahan's, and even if there are glitches – we were entertaining a visitor from France, and the restaurant had no Irish cheeses!, never even mind the Irish raw milk cheeses we were hoping to introduce to our guest! – you can forgive them because the theatre is so fine. So, a great place for a Big Night Out, and not a place to worry about the prices, and a slick, calm, business-like operation that purrs with energy and pleasure.