Yes, there is a queue, but that’s not unusual on Sea Road in Galway, where Jess Murphy’s Kai has a nine-year tradition of being worth the wait. A cold, sharp-smelling squirt of hand sanitiser and then there it is, the buttery hug (the only permissible kind) that is the smell of a restaurant kitchen at full tilt. “It always smells like stew in here,” Murphy says when she comes over to say hello. Most of the clientele are young, and happy in a quiet, smiling-widely-at-each-other-over-the-food kind of way rather than a selfies-with-the-staff fashion. After three months of home cooking – the last time The Irish Times published a restaurant review was on March 14th – we’ve reached a bottom-of-the-barrel feeling when it comes to inspiration.

Source: The Irish Times June 29, 2020 15:33 UTC