THERE was a time in Ireland, not so long ago, when a visit to a ‘serious’ restaurant was as rare and as welcome as the annual trip to the dentist as entire families squirmed in mortified silence, terrified of drawing down the withering disdain of those infinitely superior beings hovering on every shoulder, supposedly there to serve.

This summer, one of the hottest restaurant tickets in the country is Dillisk, a boat shed in Connemara. Diners sit alongside strangers on benches at bare communal tables.

The menus are a collision of the familiar and the fantastic: prosaic local meat and fish alongside more exotic produce; and you bring your own wine. Next month it will close. It may or may not open again next year.

There have been radical changes in the first world’s approach to dining and food in recent years, triggered by a perfect storm of recession in an age when food has become a bona-fide ‘hobby’ practiced by the ‘foodie’, this huge newfound public interest leading to a great democratic levelling in matters epicurean.

A New York restaurant was anxious to find out why their service had slowed down so drastically over the last 10 years, despite serving the same amount of customers with an even greater number of staff.

Analysing old CCTV footage, they discovered it was primarily down to the increased amount of time customers devoted to their mobile devices from the moment they walked into the restaurant.

This included taking photos of themselves and the food in front of them, many of them spending so long on the latter, they ended up returning dishes, complaining they were cold.

FOOD TOURISM

Food tourism is now one of the fastest growing areas in global tourism, according to the World Tourism Organisation and, though Ireland is so dependent on tourism and agriculture, we don’t really register on the global food tourism map. Nonetheless, there are plenty of homegrown food tourists.

Orlaith Mannion, from Galway, saves for her annual ‘pilgrimage’ to Chapter One.: “Winston Churchill, when he was pressed about cutting the arts budget during WWII, refused, saying the people need something to keep them going.

I’m one of the much-maligned civil servants but I’ve had three significant pay cuts during the last three years, yet I wouldn’t think a year was a proper one without saving to go to Chapter One, once a year.”

Maria O’Mahony, of the Kinsale Good Food Circle, sees it every year at their Gourmet Festival Weekend: “The ticket price is €90 for the Mad Hatter’s tasting tour and people save all year to come, sometimes in groups, putting away a tenner a month. Some would come for the weekend and have been coming for the last eight or nine years.”

Norwegian Trond Johnsen, now living in Cork, and partner Yzabel, have ticked off an impressive list, including Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck and Noma, in Copenhagen.

“There’s no point in going on your own to a place like that so we went with four friends. It’s so much about the experience that it’s nice to share that with others.

"I absolutely loved them both. Most of the big restaurants we’ve been to are in Spain but our favourite Irish restaurant is Patrick Guilbaud’s, in Dublin. It is a treat to ourselves from time to time.”

Laura Healy is a home economics teacher in Presentation College, Mitchelstown, and last year, she and nine fellow teachers made the trip to Chapter One.

“It came from a discussion at coffee break. We all need something to look forward to and we’re a young enough staff, we all get along well and are all at about the same stage in life with young families and mortgages, so it was one of those treats we could all look forward to over the year.

"We saved each week, starting in September and went up by train the following March at mid-term and stayed overnight. It was fabulous and we still talk about it.”

Dubliner William Toft is a culinary arts graduate, now working as a chef. Along with friend and fellow graduate Brian McCarthy, he is also one half of Salt Lick, currently the hippest new Dublin pop-up restaurant, operating from the homely Hobart’s Café, in Ranelagh.

“I’m very lucky to have the girlfriend I have,” says William, “she’s very understanding of me and my passion for food. The big one was going to [Michelin two-star] Restaurant Sat Bains, in Nottingham. It was her surprise present for my 30th birthday. It was excellent.”

CASUAL DINING

Dillisk is the brainchild of Katie Sanderson and Jasper O’Connor, who met while working alongside each other in Dublin’s Fumbally Café.

Katie has form in this respect: another of her culinary projects, Living Dinners, served up highly imaginative raw food dinners in offbeat locations including a rainforest, an art gallery and an empty old Georgian home.

“Jasper’s parents live in Connemara and suggested we use their boat shed so we set about converting it.

"We got loads of friends to help out. We had really nice weekends, brought friends down, cooked loads of food and worked as we went. It is definitely a summer project only though.

"Casual dining is about the way it makes you feel, you can have quite upmarket food and still have casual dining. Somewhere like Forest Avenue is one of my favourite restaurants but the feeling is really casual, you don’t have that stiffness of some of the high-end restaurants.

"At Dillisk, you have strangers ending up exchanging numbers. Communal tables were a necessity at first but now I really like the community aspect of them.”

In 2012, The Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare, became one of only a handful of restaurants ever to debut in the Michelin fine dining guide with two stars. Now it has three. But equally surprising was the set-up.

In the basement of a gourmet grocery store, a maximum of 18 customers sit at a counter, diner-style observing chef Cesar Ramirez in action.

Though a degree of decorum is expected of diners, The Chef’s Table seemed the apogee of the global trend in casual dining, a world away from the starched, stiff service of yesteryear.

Declan Ryan, of Arbutus Breads, is the former owner/operator of the Arbutus Lodge, in Cork, the first Irish establishment to receive a Michelin Star, back in 1974.

“The Michelin machine used to be too interested in the linen, the ‘waiters’, the silverware and all that but they’ve come away from that. Look at places like Aniar — which is a shop front, bare wooden tables — and absolutely superb food.”

Hazel Allen has run Ballymaloe House and Restaurant since 1971, also a former Irish Michelin star establishment.

“Recent stars have tended to move away from the haute cuisine type of thing. In England, Petersham Nurseries got a star for what was a restaurant in a garden centre; St John’s is in an old abattoir. The emphasis is definitely on the food but the surroundings are great fun.”

Derek Bulmer, who retired just three years ago after over 30 years as Michelin inspector for Ireland, traces the roots of ‘serious casual’ dining in Britain and Ireland to the pub.

“An awful lot more stars began to be awarded when the UK underwent a gastropub revolution in the early ’90s. It began with the Eagle on Farringdon Road, it was a little bit slow to start but then began to roll out to the rest of the UK and quite a number of stars in the UK are in pubs.”

The enormously successful Fade Street Social illustrates the Irish are increasingly ready to embrace the concept.

Chapter One Chef/Proprietor Ross Lewis says: “Casual dining has been coming for some time. Back in 1978, when The Carved Angel, in Devon, got a star, there was a collective gasp of breath — they didn’t even have tablecloths!

But the trend is accelerating. When the recession came, the horizon was demolished and a new one appeared and it corresponded to trends all over the world — less formality, more accessibility, really good food, a sort of super-bistro.

Young people, in their mid- to late-twenties are more likely to be gourmands as opposed to before when the typical restaurant-goer was older, middle class and more wealthy. This younger generation are very mobile, have income but don’t have the debt burden of the middle classes in the 45-60 bracket.”

Bulmer says: “I would have thought before the Irish liked their pubs for drinking in rather than eating in, for having the craic.

“If that’s changing, that’s great, there is a new and very real source of stars in the future for Ireland.”