🇮🇪Dublin, Ireland

The Boxty Pilgrimage

Ireland's most underrated dish. A potato pancake that earns its flight.

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Why this dish?

Boxty is what happens when a culture that truly loves potatoes refuses to let any of them go to waste. The dish - a thick, golden potato pancake made from grated raw potato and mashed cooked potato, bound with flour and butter - originated in rural Ireland during the 19th century as a way of using up leftovers. Today it has become Dublin's signature comfort food: served stuffed with slow-braised beef, smoked salmon, or ham and cabbage, it is substantial, warm and quietly brilliant.

There is a reason Gallagher's Boxty House in Temple Bar has had a queue outside it for thirty years. There is also a reason most people who go to Dublin have never heard of boxty and spend their visit eating fish and chips. This pilgrimage corrects that.

Our Picks

Gallagher's Boxty House

Address: 20-21 Temple Bar, Dublin
What to order: The Gaelic Boxty - beef medallions in mushroom cream sauce with a whiskey spike.
Book ahead: Book ahead for lunch, especially weekends.
Pro tip: Follow lunch with a pint of Guinness at The Palace Bar on Fleet Street - one of Dublin's finest old pubs, two minutes' walk.

The Woollen Mills

42 Lower Ormond Quay, Dublin (Ha'penny Bridge)

Perched on the Liffey beside the Ha'penny Bridge, The Woollen Mills does Dublin coddle - a broth of sausages, bacon, potato and onion that's been Dubliners' comfort food since the 1770s. A more local choice than boxty, and a dish worth seeking out.

What to order: Dublin coddle with brown bread. A glass of cold cider alongside.

Good to know

Boxty is specifically a Dublin and northern Irish dish - you won't find it as easily elsewhere in Ireland. In Dublin, beyond Gallagher's, Holohan's Pantry in the Cathedral Quarter does an excellent version. Most traditional Irish pubs in the city centre carry some form of it. Ask staff if it's made in-house; the pre-packaged version is noticeably inferior.

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