{"id":165780,"date":"2025-11-06T09:27:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T09:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/165780\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T09:27:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T09:27:12","slug":"the-dining-club-at-whitestown-house-review-the-hosts-welcome-is-warm-but-if-youd-rather-stick-pins-in-your-eyes-than-share-a-table-with-strangers-it-is-not-for-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/165780\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dining Club at Whitestown House review: \u2018The hosts\u2019 welcome is warm, but if you\u2019d rather stick pins in your eyes than share a table with strangers, it is\u00a0not for you\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">Our critic enjoys a seasonal dining experience in this north county Dublin country house\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"The Dining Club at Whitestown House Estate in Naul, Co Dublin\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Whitestown House_8.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">The Dining Club at Whitestown House Estate in Naul, Co Dublin<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Friday evening and the traffic heading north on the M50\/M1 can only be described as brutal. Somewhere near Balbriggan, my designated driver, hereinafter to be known as Saint Katia, takes the exit which will bring us to Whitestown House, located a few fields across the north Co Dublin countryside from McNally Family Farm, the source of some of the ingredients for tonight\u2019s dinner. An unhappy confluence of Google Maps, poor lighting on dark country roads and an easy-to-miss entrance means we are the last guests to arrive to the Samhain edition of The Dining Club.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Whitestown demesne dates back to the 17th century, with the current neat Georgian house built in the 1840s by Sandham Symes, chief architect to the Royal Dublin Society. Since the mid-1990s, it has been home to the Keogh family, with Hazel Keogh and her daughters Aoife and Kelly the trio \u2013 working with Kelly\u2019s co-chef James Gabriel Martin of Leviathan \u2013 responsible for The Dining Club, a series of seasonal dinners aiming to revive the tradition of Irish country house hospitality. Kelly and James are both Ballymaloe alumni.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Our critic enjoys a seasonal dining experience in this north county Dublin country house The Dining Club at&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165781,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[18,117,19,17,12487],"class_list":{"0":"post-165780","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-katy-mcguinness"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115502045570961047","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}