Welcome to Alphabet Dinners…

Well hey there you first, fabulous reader you. Welcome to the Alphabet Dinners Blog! You are officially an early adopter, and I couldn’t be more impressed at your hunger to join us on our gastronomic adventures.

So here, pull up a pew. Take a seat. Pour yourself a cuppa as I explain to you how this little idea works…

SO, WHO ARE THE ALPHABET DINERS?

We are Tamara & Richie Howard – although Tamara will be updating & maintaining the blog. Richie is happy to be dragged along for the delicious food and drink. We’ve travelled pretty extensively and while on our rambles across the world, some of our strongest core memories have been established while sharing meals and learning more about new cultures.

WHERE DID THE IDEA COME FROM?

We moved to Meath a few years ago, having lived in the heart of Dublin for many years. Over this time the dining scene has evolved dramatically with some vibrant, innovative and truly courageous places opening up.

I know I’m not alone in this…You may be in your 30s/40s too, someone who used to be “down with the kids”. Who used to have opinions on places before they even opened their doors. At the risk of admitting that I am past it, it does become kind of exhausting keeping up, doesn’t it? If you asked me where to go for a good night out, I would tell you, in all honesty, to start off at Pravda, then head to Traffic for a cocktail and finish this night off in Spirit.

20-year-old me is eye-rolling at the actual shame of it.

I haven’t been able to shake the feeling that I’m missing out. Yes, we are surrounded by gorgeous spots to dine out, but it doesn’t take long to become completely distant and removed from some of the newer developments in the hospitality scene.

Will we call it FOMO? Ya know, it could even be that simple.

I couldn’t really stand the idea that all these amazing new places were popping up and I had no awareness.

So Alphabet Dinners is my revolution against distance.

A rising up against FOMO.

THE RULES ARE SIMPLE

We don’t want to be stifled with rules or be stuck to some formula, but as Monica would say a couple of well-placed rules help control the fun…

• One restaurant for each letter per month in ascending order from A-to-Z
• No skipping “hard” letters. All letters are created equal, so we work with what we have 😂
• Restaurants should be new for us…
• BUT, in the whole alphabet we can visit known restaurants on 4 occasions. This means we get to choose our favourite spots on 4 letters only. All the rest have to be new.
• The word “The” is invisible – the first letter of the second word will be used. The same goes for Le / La etc.

THE CATEGORIES ARE CLEAR

This will probably evolve as we move through the months, but the things we are looking for are:

• Ambiance / vibe check. Honestly, this is probably most important to us. What a space is like to sit in is going to tell you very quickly whether you’d return or not.
• Price. We want to visit a lot of places with all different price ranges so I will share exactly what the meal cost for food & booze, so you can make an informed leap as to whether it’s your jam or not.
• Drinks. I don’t drink alcohol, but Richie does so we will be looking at quality, variety, complementary to food etc. for both alcoholic & booze-free imbibitions.
• Food – obviously! I’ll share what we ordered, expectations versus reality, flavours, colours, presentation
• Service…now comeheretome…I worked in hospitality for many years so I’m actually not going to rag on places for poor service. If it’s great I will share. If it’s not great, then I probably won’t be saying too much. It’s not my intention to start tearing places apart for you. I’ve no notions that I’m some wild food critic, and I have no intentions to drag people publicly online. Good vibes only.

WANT TO FOLLOW ALONG ON OUR NIGHTS OUT?

You can follow all the craic on Instagram where I am going to be looking for recommendations, shout outs, sharing updates and who knows…maybe running a few competitions along the way. Join us here.