One thing is for certain: if you're planning on dining out this Christmas, lots of new recipe ideas and new places have come to the fore. Innovation is the name of the gastronomic game.
Old dishes made new and new ingredients are on the menu. Johnny Fox's pub at Glencullen in the Dublin Mountains has turned some Irish ingredients into a new soup. On their pre-Christmas menus, they are doing colcannon soup, using potatoes and leeks.
But Mediterranean ingredients and recipes are advancing fast on the Irish restaurant market. Brannagan's restaurant in Ennis, Co Clare, is strong on Provencal flavours, including garlic, while promoting another Mediterranean special, calamari. For their millennium programme, the Hodson Bay Hotel in Athlone and the Galway Bay Hotel at Salthill are offering lots of New Orleans-style food, including shellfish and seafood.
New venues are all the rage. In Dublin, the Tosca restaurant in Suffolk Street is marketing its new kitchen, chef and menus. Another new look venue - on the first floor of Eason's in Patrick Street, Cork - is the Muse cafe.
New hotels have come on the scene and, in most cases, offer novelties in the restaurant area. Among the new hotels in Dublin is the Radisson SAS St Helen's in Booterstown; in about four months' time, the Four Seasons should open in Ballsbridge. Bewley's has opened an hotel in Ballsbridge and its restaurant - O'Connell's - is widely acclaimed.
Changes of ownership are also on the menu. The Arbutus Lodge Hotel on Montenotte in Cork is known for gastronomic prowess. It was recently taken over by John and Margaret Carmody who have light bar food in The Gallery all day while Sunday lunches are also on the menu.
Dinner is served nightly in the restaurant and the Carmodys have continued the famous Arbutus Lodge tradition of tasting menus. If you like Cork specialities - like crubeens and drisheen - cooked in new ways, this is the place to go.
Other places offer innovative cuisine. Carrig House Country House and Restaurant beside Caragh lake, near Killorglin in Co Kerry, is off the beaten track. It promises lakeside Victorian splendour with fine cuisine to match.
Even more innovative is Powerscourt near Enniskerry in Co Wicklow. There, in the restored ballroom, Fitzers are promoting gala Christmas dinners for £75 a head.
To start, there's a candlelit Champagne reception in the Garden Rooms, overlooking the floodlit gardens, with local carol singers serenading the diners. The dinner is five course and tables each seat 10. After the meal, there's dancing in these most elegant surroundings.
Style, elegance and newness should be keynote features of Christmas dining out this year, appropriate indeed as the millennium approaches.
