Please mention visitlimerick.com when enquiring. Padraic Frawley's modern city centre bar and restaurant typifies the renewal of Limerick itself as a university city with a youthful population and, it is said, with more cafés, pubs and restaurants than any other in Ireland. Padraic, a hotel management graduate who trained at the highly respected catering college nearby in Shannon, returned to his home city at the grand old age of 27 bursting with ideas collected during experience abroad and proceeded to transform an old pub into this dashing contemporary bar and restaurant. The layout is on several levels with no hard divisions and a mixture of seating in various areas, which can lead to confusion between customers coming in to eat rather than have a drink, although watchful staff soon have new arrivals sorted. While the style is uncompromisingly modern, down to the designer crockery, chef Mike Ryan’s values are quite traditional and sound cooking is inspired by the admirable Gary Rhodes' style: 'dishes that are simple to make, tasty and look great'. Appealing, well-balanced menus change frequently and offer a number of different options for bar food and more structured meals in the restaurant / wine bar Hush; there’s a very likeable house style that integrates vegetables into each dish - a starter of smoked venison comes with celeriac remoulade & redcurrant , jelly, for example, and pan-fried breast of chicken comes well-garnished with mash, mushrooms and a pea & leek broth. Despite the stylish presentation there is a welcome down-to-earth feeling about the food here; overall, it’s an enjoyable experience and the contrast between the casual, lively bar area and Hush, with its crisply starched napkins, is pleasing. Vegetarians are well looked after, with appealing dishes marked clearly on menus; the early dinner offers very good value.