Dublin Airport food: Where to go, where to avoid and what’s coming

More than six million passengers will travel into and out of Dublin Airport this month and next, as the summer holiday season reaches its peak. From 4am until the last flight departs late in the evening, terminals one and two (T1 and T2) will be teeming with hungry and thirsty travellers - a captive audience waiting to be fed and watered. So, where can you find a quiet table with a good menu that will suit everyone; a healthy breakfast option; or a tasty takeaway to carry on board?

Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) recently announced several new additions to the 40 food and beverage outlets in operation across both terminals, some of which will open in the coming weeks as part of a 15-point plan launched in March this year. The DAA says the plan aims to “provide a better and more enjoyable travel experience for passengers”.

The Fallow Kitchen and Bar, which opened last July, is the main sit-down restaurant in T2 (see our experience below). In mid-July, a new offering will open upstairs in this terminal. The Mezz street food will seat 300 guests, who will be able to order from Camile Thai, Ancho Mexican street food, Erin’s Kitchen and Handsome Burger from a series of kiosks. Orders can be placed for food from more than one outlet, on the same docket. Cloud Picker speciality coffee will also open soon in T2, with two additional outlets later this year.

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The Gate Clock bar, in the 300 gates in T1, has been in place since 1992. It has been given a facelift and a new takeaway hatch added, but it retains its old Irish pub fixtures and fittings. Toasted sandwiches, on McCloskey’s bloomer bread, are the new menu option here. Elsewhere in T1′s main concourse, a former retail space opposite Starbucks remains closed off behind hoardings. A tender process is in progress for the redevelopment of this area into a multi-option food hall, due to be completed next year.

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There are changes afoot in the airport lounges too, with the introduction of a hot buffet breakfast and a hot lunch/dinner menu in some of these facilities, access to which is provided free to business-class passengers and available to book online or in person to all travellers, subject to availability. The T1/T2 lounge pass costs €30 if purchased online and €35 at the door.

With soft drinks, tea and coffee and two alcoholic drinks per person, plus sandwiches and snacks, and now a hot food menu, all complimentary, buying lounge access can be an attractive proposition. Children are permitted access, with no charge for those under two years of age, and a reduced fee of €20 for those under 18. For long-haul passengers, East Lounge and 51st&Green are slightly more expensive, at €46 and €45 (with discounts for booking online, and for children).

Terminal two

At 2pm on a Friday in mid-June, it takes just six minutes to pass through security in T2 at Dublin Airport. Having walked through duty-free, the first refreshment stops that come into view are a Starbucks coffee shop and the Fallow Kitchen and Bar. There are about 12 people in the queue for the Fallow, and a wall-mounted screen says: “Food is leaving our kitchen within 14 minutes average from ordering.”

As I join the queue, a server is checking if everyone is happy to order from their phones, using the QR code on the tables. One diner is hesitant, and is told that he can choose from a paper menu, and place his order with a waiter, “but it takes a long time”. There is a paper menu on my table when I am seated, less than 10 minutes after joining the queue, and a QR code which, when activated on my phone, brings up an all-day menu, a children’s menu and a drinks list (and a bar snacks option not included on the paper menu).

It’s a crowd-pleasing selection on offer, with beef and chicken burgers (and a Beyond Meat vegan option), fish and chips, sausages and mash and a couple of salads. There is also a “signature collection” which offers a premium Irish beef-and-stout burger with bacon, Milleens smoked cheese and braised sticky onions in a potato brioche bun (€20.95 including skin-on fries and rainbow slaw); charred leek and pea risotto (€17.95), and haddock en papilotte (€22.95), a nice change from all the fried options, the fish coming with “heritage Irish tomatoes, potatoes and beets dressed with seaweed and olive oil”.

I order Korean-style BBQ buttermilk chicken tenders and fries from the bar snacks menu, and a large Diet Coke, and pay on my phone, with the receipt for €17.15 landing in my email within minutes. Service is equally efficient, with my drink arriving within six minutes, quickly followed, 11 minutes after ordering, by my chicken and chips. The food is fine, nothing exceptional, but better than many airport meals I have had in the past. Three chunky chicken tenders are doused in a sweet and slightly spicy sauce. The skin-on fries could be hotter, considering they’ve arrived at my table 11 minutes after being ordered.

Having settled the bill at the time of ordering, I can get up and leave as soon as I am finished eating, without having to locate a server or queue to pay. The Fallow is a huge, bright and airy space, seating 400 diners, and kept spotlessly clean by vigilant staff. However, the paper menu I am given is a bit grubby, and the ketchup, brown sauce, mayo and vinegar bottles on each table keep it in the cafe rather than fine dining realm, despite the fish en papilotte and charred leek risotto notions. Ashbourne butcher Hugh Maguire is name-checked as the supplier of beef burgers, sausages and bacon. There are kids’ menus for both breakfast and all-day.

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Other dining options are limited in the main departures concourse in T2 on the day I visit. There is a Butlers Chocolate Café as well as a Starbucks. But Flutes wine bar, a nice spot to perch on a stool and start a holiday trip with a glass of wine and some snacks, is gone, replaced by a Café Bar outlet selling sandwiches, hot and cold drinks and alcohol. I head upstairs and find a Burger King, with queues at the self-service screens and also for collection, and hardly any available seats. There is also another, recently added, Café Bar outlet.

Terminal one

By 3pm I have cleared security, eaten lunch and completed the hike between the two terminals. T1 is busier, and the choice of eating options more varied. There are the usual Butlers and Starbucks options, and a Wright’s of Howth concession where you can pick up takeaway sandwiches and wraps, smoked salmon on brown bread, seafood salad, Oishii Sushi, or have a sandwich made to order.

You can also make your flight companions envious by shelling out for one of Wright’s “first class inflight meals”. These are plastic trays with rare roast beef, or salmon, with salads, dessert or cheese. They come with either a snipe of Champagne or a quarter bottle of wine, and the price is determined by the alcohol, with bubbles bringing the cost to €49.50.

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If you want a proper sit-down meal on the ground floor of the main departures area in T1, you’re looking at Marqette, where a giant overhead sign at the entrance proclaims it to be “winner, food hall of the year worldwide 2017 and 2018″. The options here are varied, and the food looks fresh and appetising, but the queue system for each of the food court-style ordering points is confusing, and it can get very crowded here.

There are pizza slices (€12.95 with salad or fries); carvery meats (€12.90-€15.95 with potatoes and vegetables); a hot sandwich bar (€9.50 or €12.95 with fries); an omelette station, and a well-stocked help-yourself salad bar (€8.95 or €14.95 with salmon, chicken or vegetarian tartlets). Breakfast is served until 1pm and a family breakfast deal - two full Irish with toast and hot drinks, and two children’s breakfasts with juice cartons - will set you back €45. You can also use your phone to order pizza, or a hot roll, to be delivered to your table at the Marqette Guinness bar, on the opposite side of the walkway.

A short walk further on, Nomad, a healthy option, is selling porridge bowls, loaded toasts, burritos, hot grain bowls and salads, to take away or to eat at the few stools within the concession. I pick up a satay noodle salad to eat later, for dinner (€14.50). It promises more than it delivers, with barely any satay sauce and chicken that has a weird, mushy texture. The noodles are good, though, and the carrots and mangetout nice and crunchy. The Roasted Notes speciality coffee, made with Brazilian beans, is excellent.

Next door, Street Kitchen has attracted a good queue of people waiting to order burritos, rice bowls, salads and wraps. In the morning, it sells breakfast brioche buns stuffed with a variety of fillings (€8.50-€10.50). Factor in time to queue for these popular options.

There is another Burger King upstairs, along with the Garden Terrace Bar Cafe/Grill, a sign for which invites passengers to “try our new and improved menu”. There are giant photos of some well-known Irish food producers on the walls here, including Gold River Farm (vegetables), Killenure Dexter farm (beef) and Firehouse Bakery (bread). None are name-checked on the all-day menu of burgers, salads and sandwiches, light bites and “classics” (chicken korma, fish and chips, sausages and colcannon and three-bean stew). It is very noisy here when I visit, with sticky tabletops, very few free seats and a big queue for the bar.