The 2008 Bridgestone 100 Best Guides

The finest restaurants & the most glorious places to stay in Ireland.

You have probably come to expect the strange, the unusual, the picaresque and the controversial, from the annual Bridgestone 100 Best Guides.

This year, in addition to the strange, the unusual, the picaresque and the controversial, you also get poetry.

Specifically, you get a poem about Black Puddings.

The twelve-stanza poem features in the opening pages of the Bridgestone 100 Best Places to Stay in Ireland, and was inspired by - and uses the language of - Ed Hick, the luminary Dublin pork butcher to whom the new book is dedicated.

A poem about blood puddings! What next?

Well, perhaps poems about upland beef, and Irish lamb, and fresh haddock, and whatever you fancy yourself. Middle Eastern and Mediterranean poets and writers have always written about food just as much as they have written about love - think of Pliny's line, "Honey is the saliva of the stars"- so now it's our turn.

Above all, we need poetry about potatoes, just in time for The Year of the Potato.

"O Lumper, O Lumper, light of my life…"
Well, that one maybe needs a bit of work.

There is no poetry in the 100 Best Restaurants 2008, just the best cooks, the best crews, the best rooms and the best menus, from Rathmullan to Skibbereen, from Waterford to Belfast. This is a terrifically exciting time in modern Irish gastronomy, and the 100 Best Restaurants 2008 is proof that you will eat as well in Ireland as any of the global-gastro-hot-spots you care to name.

The new books are available to buy online straightaway, and if you do this you can get free postage! Buy online now