With its OTT decor, charming staff and more-than-decent food, this is a party not to be missed, says our food critic
Gloria Osteria has opened on Dublin’s Westmoreland Street
I didn’t plan to be the first paying customer through the doors of Gloria Osteria’s brand new Dublin restaurant, but that’s how things worked out. Arriving a few minutes early for a 7pm reservation made weeks previously, we’re prevented from entering the building – the former AIB bank on Westmoreland Street – by a red ribbon strung across the entrance.
A few minutes later, Antonello del Mastro, from Puglia, emerges with a pair of scissors and does the business. In we go and up the steps into the most opulent dining room the city has seen in many a year, transported from this rather grim, no-man’s-land stretch straight to the heart of glamorous Milan as channelled by Dolce & Gabbana and Donatella Versace.