Wildflower opens in Dublin

The Dublin restaurant scene is already in pretty good shape and now it’s getting even better with the opening of Wildflower. Irish Chef Adrian Martin is self-financing the launch of his ambitious project in the city, with Wildflower due to open tomorrow Tuesday, February 2nd on Richmond Street South, opposite the former site of the Bernard Shaw pub.

The 30-year-old Cavan-born chef already has a Wildflower site in Camden, London – opened in 2020 – which has firmly cemented itself in the fine dining scene there. Now Dublin’s ready to get its own taste

Wildflower is unique in that it’s spread across four distinct and very differently appointed spaces over two floors of a formerly unoccupied Georgian building. After significant building work and renovations, the restaurant was due to open on New Year’s Eve, but the curtailment of hospitality opening hours delayed the project by a further month.

Each floor occupies different seating capacities and menus. The upper floor, for example, seats 35 people for a three-course menu, while the cellar dining room seats 12 for a 10-course tasting menu.

“The idea of this restaurant is based on foraging and fermentation,” Martin explained. The launch menu features dishes such as “Glazed Thornhill Duck Foie Gras, Onion Miso, Vetch, Sauce Grand Veneur”, and “Dexter Beef Chateaubriand, Fermented Cep Paste, Smoked Bone Marrow Sauce, Cep Mushrooms”.

Almost every dish has a wild or foraged element on the plate, with ingredients including yarrow, oak moss, meadow sweet, and sea aster.

Wildflower by Adrian Martin will open for dinner from Tuesday to Saturday (tasting menu Wednesday to Saturday), and for lunch Thursday to Saturday.