The floods of late 2009 devastated Café Paradiso, but true to form, and showing what indomitable troopers they are, Denis Cotter and his team were back in business within a month, with both the restaurant and the pair of rooms upstairs beautifully refurbished and – though it is hard to believe – actually made better than before. The Café and the Paradiso Rooms share an aesthetic, which is somewhat quirky, unusual, a distinctive and different take on cooking, design, style.
There are no other rooms in Ireland quite like these, with their idiosyncratic design, their spaciousness and warming simplicity, their perfect mix of luxury and utility. And there is no cuisine quite like that concocted by Denis Cotter and his crew, a brand of cooking that doesn’t use meat or fish, but which is utterly self-possessed and complete unto itself. “I would happily eat in this restaurant every week!” is how Eamon Barrett described the cooking after staying here for a few days.
