Catherine and Gavin Hanly, the brother and sister pair behind the Murphia List of top Irish players in the London food scene, are better placed than most to judge the rise of Irish food culture on both sides of the Irish Sea.
England-born and raised but of Irish parents, they would head “home” to Connacht every year, the very minute their English school holidays kicked in. Catherine refers to Galway as “local”, while Gavin describes “going back” to Ireland. On top of this, they’re the founders of Hot Dinners, the respected independent London dining website. So when they say they know food and they know Ireland, it’s demonstrably true.
Catherine points to one Galway restaurant as exemplifying how Irish food has changed in recent years.
“One of our local places back in Galway is the Twelve down in Barna. We have been going there since it was a very straightforward pub and hotel. Most recently, their restaurant, the Blackthorn, has just got a nod from the Michelin Guide this year,” she says.
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She describes the wider celebration of Irish food in recent years as “fascinating”.
The former Empire magazine journalist cofounded Hot Dinners with Gavin, a user experience designer, close to two decades ago.
“We were going to New York a lot, and it was around 2007 or 2008 when we could see that there were all these cool blogs and websites talking about what was opening next and covering the food scene as it was developing,” she says.
“Whereas over in London, all we really had was directories and restaurant reviews, and there was nothing in between that told people what was opening, what was closing, what was coming up, what chefs were doing.”
Where Catherine provided the editorial skills, Gavin provided the technical, “so we complemented each other”, she says.
Since then, Hot Dinners has become London’s biggest independent food and drink publication. The blog runs across platforms with an audience of just under 500,000 between website, newsletter, Instagram and TikTok, and is self-funded.
Setting up a business together as siblings was significant for the Hanlys after their Roscommon father instilled an entrepreneurial spirit.
“One of the things he always told us was, you have to work for yourself. So we’ve always been looking for things that we could work on together that could be our own thing, and this fit the bill for us,” says Gavin.
But they didn’t quit their day jobs instantly.
“For at least five or six years, we did this in addition to our daytime jobs, and then slowly but surely moved towards spending more time on it, and then eventually becoming full time. So what was a passion project has now actually become a fully fledged business” says Catherine.
Hot Dinners releases the Murphia List in the lead up to St Patrick’s Day. It recognises the contribution made by Irish people to the hospitality industry in London.
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The Murphia List is now in its 12th year, and features a shiny new sponsorship from Kerrygold. The Hanlys say the initial list came about because the pair “kept noticing Irish talent”.
“Obviously we’re going to hear the accents,” says Catherine. “We decided that it’d be really nice to have an annual list which recognised all the Irish talent in the in the London restaurant and bar scene.”
She adds that the Murphia List, is “our way of leveraging our own Irish heritage to spotlight the Irish talent in London’s hospitality scene”.
The Hanlys’ experience of growing up Irish in England in the 1970s and 1980s [they grew up in Hertfordshire] was less fraught than that of their parents, having been overwhelmingly positive.
“In our experience growing up, there was never a point that being Irish was a negative attribute. I know that certainly for our parents in the 50s and 60s, it would have been slightly different,” says Catherine.
Her brother says that if anything, there has been a complete reversal of the situation that prevailed in London in the 50s and 60s.
“Right now, it’s only a positive if you are Irish in London,” he says.
“I think the perception of the Irish in, certainly in the last 20 or so years has been generally positive, and I think social media has only improved that because of chefs like Robin Gill, or even the publican Oisín Rogers from The Devonshire, who are just good on social media.”
Established in 2023, The Devonshire pub serves an estimated 20,000 pints of Guinness a week and has amassed a huge celebrity following, throwing parties for the likes of the Irish creative head of Dior Jonathan Anderson and musician Ed Sheeran.
It came about when pub landlord Rogers joined forces with fellow Irishman Charlie Carroll and chef Ashley Palmer-Watts to found a pub with a restaurant upstairs in the heart of Soho. Gavin says the venture has made Rogers “not only the most influential Irishman in hospitality in London, [but] ... probably the most influential publican and person involved in food in the city. His star has risen quite dramatically in the last number of years.”
He jokes that English customers were initially bemused by one aspect of the Irish pub experience.
“The thing about The Devonshire, certainly for the first couple of years, was that people were sort of surprised that the Guinness was left on the bar before it was ready to be finished,” says Gavin.
However, it wasn’t long before London drinkers took to the black stuff, with Gen Z fads such as “splitting the G” following, which Catherine says “feels like a very London trend”.
Other notable Irish stars of the London food scene according to the Hanlys include Gill of Sorella and Darby’s, as well as Tallaght-born chef Anna Haugh who runs Myrtle in London and will be a judge on the 22nd season of Masterchef.
“It’s not just the people and the talent, it’s the fact that so many people here recognise now how amazing Irish produce is, whether we’re talking about meat, cheese, butter, oysters – that’s what we’re really seeing on London menus as well,” says Catherine.
And as the Murphia List matures along with a recognition of Irish food talent, the Hanlys have noted an increased and happy cross-pollination between London and Irish kitchens, in a way bringing the list full circle.
“Over the course of the years that we’ve been doing the Murphia List, we have seen people who are going back to Ireland and opening restaurants there. That’s the thing that we wouldn’t have seen at the very beginning.”
The 2026 Murphia List will be revealed on March 9th
