Daffodil Mulligan

The salad leaves come out of Richard Corrigan's own polytunnels at Virginia Park Lodge in County Cavan and land on a wood grill in EC1 (Hot Dinners).

Why go

This was Corrigan's first new London restaurant in more than a decade when it opened on 8 November 2019, in the room the Irish restaurant Nuala had left. He did it with John Nugent, who founded Kings Place at King's Cross, and Tony Gibney of Gibney's of Malahide outside Dublin. His son Richie runs the floor and Tony's son Cormac ran the bar. Harden's calls the arrangement a "social co-op of like-minded people" (ref).

The kit is the argument. Harden's describes "a stylish open kitchen centred on a big wood fired grill", and the menu the venue writes for itself is "whole cuts of meat, fresh fish, seasonal vegetables from the grill, along with raw seafood" (venue site). Lobster goes into the wood oven for a couple of minutes and comes straight out to the table.

Irish here means the produce, and Andy Hayler said so plainly after eating in September 2021: "the menu is not Irish themed, with offerings such as salt chilli fried chicken and lamb cooked over embers with ricotta and shepherd's pie croquette" (ref). The beef is Peter Hannan's from Northern Ireland. Catherine Hanly, visiting three weeks after opening, recorded that the menu could change as much as twice a day.

Four seats sit up at the oyster bar, against the ten the launch announcement promised, and they are the seats to ask for. Beef tartare comes served inside the oyster shell with oyster cream over it.

Gibney's is in the basement, run mainly by the Gibney side of the partnership, with Club Orange and King's crisps on the shelf and the Irish rugby on. Harden's is blunt about the appeal: you can skip dinner entirely and go down there to drink Guinness.

Order this / avoid

• Order: the whipped smoked cod's roe with seaweed and smoked salmon on soda bread crackers, which Hanly called the best budget dish in London at the time. Beef tartare in the oyster shell. Whatever whole cut is on the grill. The wood-oven lobster. Mash with the bone marrow crumb.
• Avoid: Sunday, when the building is shut. Turning up expecting bacon and cabbage, since the Irishness is in the sourcing. Booking the dining room if the oyster bar is what you want, because there are only four of those seats.

What locals & experts say

• Andy Hayler, September 2021, scoring plate by plate out of twenty: yellowfin tuna tartare with citrus, lychee and mint at 14, venison with pearl barley and cocoa nibs at 14, fire oven squid with mussels and chorizo at 13. His verdict: "Overall Daffodil Mulligan was very enjoyable, offering an appealing menu of well executed food at fair prices." His lowest mark, and the criticism worth carrying, went to crisp salsify at 12: "the salsify was very much on the al dente side, and the brown butter didn't enliven it greatly." He also counted the wine list at 53 bottles with an average markup of 3.2 times retail. ref
• Harden's, rebuilt each year from its diner survey, on the room: "the open kitchen dominated by a fiery grill leads onto a stylish modern interior. Though the food is strongly rooted in the British Isles, it's very much a 21st-century menu." And the line it has now printed in two separate editions: "Richard Corrigan's 'unassuming but amazing' bar/restaurant... has, perhaps due to its pre-pandemic debut, never quite capitalised on his renown and its high quality." A diner's own words: "Big tasty fire-cooked food that lands well and goes with good wines and excellent Irish brews." ref
• Catherine Hanly, Hot Dinners, 19 November 2019, three weeks after opening: "The menu by Corrigan and Kelly can change as much as twice daily, keeping the restaurant on its toes and that energy really translates through to the dining room." Her piece discloses that Hot Dinners ate as guests. ref
• No national critic found. Searched on 1 August 2026 for a review in the Standard, Guardian, Times or the Infatuation, and for a chef pick across all 622 records in the London vote graph. Nothing. Richard Corrigan himself appears in that file as a voter for somewhere else, and his own room never carries his tag.

Good to know

• Where: 70-74 City Road, EC1Y 2BJ, about a minute from Old Street tube, exit 3.
• Timing: Monday dinner only, 4pm to 11pm. Tuesday to Friday lunch noon to 3pm and dinner 4pm to 11pm. Saturday lunch noon to 3pm, dinner 4pm to 10pm. Closed Sunday.
• Booking: through the venue's own system. Ask for the oyster bar by name.
• The bar: Gibney's, in the basement, an outpost of the Malahide pub, with live music and the games on. Harden's warns it is louder and busier than the restaurant.
• Money: Hayler paid 63 pounds a head for food and service without wine in 2021, and put a realistic figure with a shared bottle at around 70.
• Hygiene: FSA rating 2, Islington, inspected 7 April 2026, FHRSID 1296887. The components read hygiene 0, structural 15, confidence in management 5, where lower is better, so food handling scored perfectly and the mark is the fabric of the building plus a management-confidence deduction. The rating is four months old and in force. It stays disclosed and the restaurant stays recommendable, which is what ADR-0022 requires; it is also a reason to put something else in your first three this month. ref
• Sites: one. Bentley's and Corrigan's Mayfair are Richard Corrigan's other London restaurants and are separate businesses, so nothing written about them describes this kitchen.
• The name: Daffodil Mulligan is the daughter of Biddy Mulligan, a 1930s Dublin music-hall character, and has a song of her own by the folk band Lankum. Corrigan's first London restaurant was called Mulligan's.

Jeff's take (his words)

• Note: none. His saved-places export carries an empty note for this row. The master list's line "Richard Corrigan's Irish-accented Old Street spot" came from an earlier enrichment pass, not from him.

Verdict (Chef Jeff ladder)

should-visit — Worth the detour for the fire and the produce, with one caveat you should know before you book. Richard Corrigan opened this on 8 November 2019, his first new London room in over a decade, with John Nugent of Kings Place and Tony Gibney of Gibney's of Malahide. The kitchen is built around a wood-fired grill in an open pass, and the sourcing runs back to his own estate at Virginia Park Lodge in County Cavan, polytunnel salad leaves included, with beef from Hannan Meats. The menu is Irish in its produce rather than in its dishes, which Andy Hayler noticed straight away when he found salt chilli fried chicken and lamb cooked over embers on it. He scored the plates individually and they land at 13 and 14 out of 20, with tuna tartare, venison and a pearl barley risotto at the top, and he called the whole thing well executed food at fair prices. Harden's diners describe big fire-cooked food that lands well. Two seats matter more than the rest: the four at the oyster bar, where the beef tartare arrives inside an oyster shell. Downstairs is Gibney's, an outpost of a Malahide pub, pouring what the neighbourhood rates as the best Guinness around. It holds at should-visit rather than climbing because Harden's has twice written that the place has never caught fire against its owner's reputation, and because there is a live hygiene rating of 2 from 7 April 2026 on the record. Food handling scored perfectly in that inspection and the mark is the building, but a finding in force is a reason to keep a room out of anyone's first three.