Tornare a Cirillos

Recently revisited Cirillos.

We booked a table for earlyish on a Friday evening.

Sometimes I am always a little worried when I love somewhere on the first visit and it lets me down on the repeat visit. I am really happy to be able to say that was not the case with Cirillos. The food is amazing. The staff are great and full of bants.

We had a lovely table in the corner. We had some prosecco with our starters.

For starters I had the arancini. Delicious balls of rice, mozzarella and tomato with a dipping sauce.

I chose a Nealo pizza for my main. A white pizza (pizza bianche) with ricotta, red onion, nduja and mozzarella. The nduja was deliciously spicy.

For dessert I chose the Tiramisu. I didn't want to share so Sean had to order his own!! Big slice but super light.

You can order pizza for collection. The food was so good I returned a couple of weeks later to collect some pizzas to have at home. And yeah I chose the Nealo again :)

Grand (canal area) date night

One of my favourite views of Dublin is around Grand Canal.

Started off our evening at The Marker Hotel for a glass of wine. 

I chose a glass of Picpoul de Pinet.

From there we walked to Osteria Lucio - the tunnel restaurant on Clanwilliam Terrace. We had a great table that was perfectly situated to feel the vibrations from the trains passing nearby.

The last time we ate at the tunnel restaurant it was Pizza e Porchetta. Now it's Osteria Lucio and Ross Lewis from Chapter One is here. I do believe the mark has been raised (albeit from a pretty high threshold to begin with!) 

The staff are so nice and friendly! 

Here's their A la Carte dinner menu: 

We ordered a bottle of 6 Sei Corone Nero D'avola. It was a very nice and light red wine. 

So to the food. I ordered poached salmon for starters and Sean chose the poached egg.

The salmon is served with romanesco, pesto, horseradish emulsion and orange. It's served cold and all the flavours / textures really complimented each other.

  

The poached egg was served with brioche, oyster mushrooms, smoked paprika mayonnaise, prosciutto and vacca rossa foam. The egg was perfectly cooked. 

That was followed by the prosciutto and buffalo pizza which I asked to be a white pizza. They had no problem with that order. The pizza base was perfect. Light and crispy and the toppings were plentiful. The mozzarella was well melted,  the prosciutto was delicious as was the Parmesan. The rocket was as peppery as it should be. I tried it with a bit of their chilli oil which had a serious kick. A little slice of pizza heaven!!!

Sean chose the wild boar ragu taglioni. He loved it and said he'd have eaten an entire huge pot of it. 

For dessert I had Tiramisu. It was the nicest and lightest Tiramisu I have ever tried!!! I also had an Americano. They're serving up Imbibe Fair trade coffee. Really really good. 

Sean had the Affogato - vanilla gelato and an espresso. 

Can't tell you enough how good the food is there. 

Enjoyed a top date night immensely :) 

Munich to Berlin

Six hour train journey from Munich to Berlin...

Bit of drama when we thought our train was cancelled due to rail workers strike but thankfully it wasn't!!

We had picked up some Madeleine's at Eilles near the Glockenspiel the evening before.

Stocked up on lots of yummy junk food treats and water at Munich Hautbanhof. Lots of places to choose from - we got most at Munchner Zuckler and Yormas (great name right?) 

Other treats were a lot of jellies, lindt hello chocolate (strawberry cheesecake, salted caramel & dark chocolate cookie) and bacon & cheese popcorn. 

That evening we tried Trattoria a Muntagnola for dinner. Reserved for 9pm. The food is supposed to be fantastic dishes cooked by an 85 year old Italian mamma. 

The red wine I picked (Sangiovese) & the ciabatta dipped in Balsamic vinegar were unfortunately the highlights of the trip here. 

A small antipasti plate followed by the cannelloni for me. I don't know if I just chose wrong but it wasn't good! He had the pappardelle with meat balls (which were tiny!) and his brother had the Quattro Stagioni pizza. 

All in all it was average. From there we walked to Stagger Lees for cocktails.

I tried the Old East - far too easy to drink! Quite a hipstery place slowly serving great cocktails but it's worth trying once. 

Munich day one

On holidays this week in Munich & Berlin..

No time for airport pints in Dublin after bag drop & security! Plane food was Cadbury's Mint Puddles & tangy Haribo Minions jellies - great breakfast! 

 

Arrived to our hotel too early so the rooms weren't ready (Hotel Bavaria - ideal location for Oktoberfest!) we were able to leave our luggage there & then we headed out to explore. 

Took the ubahn to Odeonsplatz and then had a wander towards the Glockenspiel.

From Marienplatz we walked to Hofbrauhaus Munchen. This beer hall is huge!! We managed to find some seats on our second walk around and grabbed some menus. Traditional German food served with litres (or half) of beer. I chose Broitzeller (veal sausage) and Breze (pretzel) and a white wine cooler. Great intro to the city! 

That evening we had planned to go for pizza but when it came to looking for the restaurant we couldn't find it walking in the rain so our second restaurant choice was Piccola Osteria on Amalienstr.. Lovely quirky little Italian restaurant serving good fresh pasta dishes. You can watch the chef at work.. Oh and Ferrari wine anyone??

I chose white wine and they had more beer. 

We had an antipasti plate to start and then I chose the fresh ravioli with sage butter. This was rich and buttery and covered with Parmesan and the pasta was cooked really well. 

For dessert I chose tiramisu (had to try it!) and it was served with a lovely cherry coulis and fresh apple slices. 

Back to the hotel then for one last drink before bed. I chose Caiprinha - bloody gorgeous way to finish off a great first day!!