Judging Process

The selection process to become a County winner in the main category involves 2 stages.

County Winners then go on to the second stage of the process just after the sentence combined judges and readers vote.

Stage 1

Firstly, a Chef / Restaurant / Hotel / Gastro Pub must be nominated by a reader of the Sunday Independent or a Member of The Restaurant Association of Ireland. The nomination period is February 5th - 24th. All of the nominations are then audited by our independent adjudicators KPMG.

In early March our Regional judging panels, made up of industry experts across the 5 regions meet to assess the nominations. The results from our Judging panel which makes up 60% of the overall vote plus the results from the reader’s nominations which makes up 40% of the vote are combined and then reviewed by KPMG to give an overall winner. The winner of each category is that chef / restaurant / hotel or gastro pub who has the highest combined judges and readers vote.

Stage 2

There are 3 elements to this stage of the process:

Mystery Guest Visit- 35%
All County Winners receive a mystery guest visit after the regional events. The Irish Restaurant awards are the only awards in the Industry where each of the Restaurants receive a visit from an independent Mystery Guest visitor who assess the dining experience in terms of food quality, menu, customer service ,premises and over all experience.

National Awards Academy – 55%
Our National Awards Academy made up of judges from each of the regions meet at the end of May to cast their votes.

Menu Judging – 10%
Each of the County winners must submit their food and wine menus for judging as part of the process.

All of these scores are again combined and then reviewed by KPMG who give us our Regional and All Ireland winners.

Members of the Restaurants Association of Ireland nominate in the Industry Category.
These nominations will also be judged by our National Awards Academy and independently assessed by KPMG.