Gluten-Free in Kilkenny: Ristorante Rinuccini

Unfortunately, we didn’t have a lot of luck with food in Ireland. It was difficult to find allergy-friendly restaurants outside of Temple Bar in Dublin; so, for most of the journey, we were limited to pubs and dodgy looking (and smelling) family restaurants. In fact, between Cork, Portmagee, Valentia Island, and Galway I ended up eating very little, which *I think* saved me from food poisoning.

In a nutshell: Irish food is a meat/potatoes combo, street food is non-existent (beyond food markets), an “Irish” breakfast is the same experience everywhere, and while we found a few coffee shops worth mentioning, nothing really knocked my socks off.

The exception to all of this was Ristorante Rinuccini in Kilkenny. It didn’t appear on my list of GF friendly restaurants in Yelp. I’m not sure why it didn’t appear, but we found it rather accidentally because I *ahem* fell down a set of stairs and landed beside a number of awards posted outside the entrance. Curious, I Googled it and immediately made a reservation.

The food here was nothing short of fantastic and it was a welcome reprieve from standard Irish food. As an aside, when I told the chef the GF thing he whipped up a batch of special bread.