Corinna Hardgrave

Corinna Dunne was born on 3 August 1962 in Bagenalstown (Muine Bheag), County Carlow, to Carmel (née Kelly) and Peter Dunne. The family later moved to Templeogue in Dublin. Her love of food and cooking was traced by The Irish Times to time spent in the kitchen with her mother and her Aunt Jo, a passionate cook who gave her a lifelong love of baking. In her early teenage years she collected menus from every restaurant she visited, however humble.

She attended national school in Templeogue and secondary school at Presentation College, Terenure. After returning to Dublin in 1990 she spent a year at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD). Later in her career she earned the Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET) Diploma in Wines and Spirits, and her professional profile also lists an MSc in Management (Digital Marketing).

After her Leaving Certificate she worked at Guinness, then as a Gulf Air flight attendant based in Bahrain, where she later worked for a promotions and marketing agency and sold her flower paintings through a local gallery. Back in Ireland she worked in PR and marketing agencies, and was about to join Nestlé in the UK when she met her future husband.

From 2005 she contributed to the eGullet food forum and from 2007 moderated its cooking and UK and Ireland forums. Her first Irish Times piece, on El Bulli, appeared in 2006. She was restaurant critic and wine writer for Irish Tatler for more than eight years, edited the Eat Out restaurant guide and the Frequent Business Travellers Club magazine, wrote food and travel for The Sunday Times from 2011, and from 2017 was the weekly wine columnist of the Irish Independent's Weekend magazine.

In 2020 she became restaurant critic of The Irish Times, a post she held until her death. She also wrote travel features for the paper, judged restaurant and wine awards, hosted wine tastings and dinners, chaired the education committee of Wine Spirit Women and lectured as a guest at DCU Business School.

In 1997 she met Steve Hardgrave, a former US Navy pilot, in the Horseshoe Bar of the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin. They married in 1999, lived briefly in the UK and returned to Ireland in 2000. Their daughters Katherine and Isabelle were born in 2000 and about 18 months later. Family holidays were planned around restaurants, and her favourite meal was the twin lobster and steamed clams dinner at the Muscongus Bay Lobster shack in coastal Maine, near where her husband spent childhood summers. She lived in the Terenure and Templeogue area of Dublin. In 2008 she was diagnosed with breast cancer and recovered after extensive chemotherapy; the illness later returned.

She saw her first duty as being to the reader. Her editor Ruadhán Mac Cormaic said she never set out to skewer a business but was not afraid to call out poor service, high prices or bad food. She cared deeply about how the hospitality industry treated its workers, insisted on transparency about sourcing, and campaigned for Irish produce. She also argued that state agencies were missing opportunities for the Irish restaurant and food industry, as in her column on the Michelin Guide ceremony coming to Dublin.

Chef Ross Lewis of Chapter One said her words changed how the hospitality industry saw and consumed food, and that her praise meant something. Irish Times colleagues described her ability to reach a restaurant's essence in a few hundred words with lightness but never without seriousness. Many younger food writers she mentored, and many people with cancer she had advised and reassured, paid tribute after her death.

The Irish Times reported that she won the Irish Food Writing Awards restaurant writing prize a record three times, in 2021, 2024 and 2025, most recently as Restaurant Critic of the Year. Her own website noted that she won the Food Writing Award at the inaugural Irish Food Writing Awards in 2021 and the Restaurant Writing Award in 2022. She was a member of the Irish Food Writers' Guild from 2012 and a longstanding judge for restaurant and wine awards.

She compiled and edited the Homes of Good Food cookery book, which accompanied the RTÉ television series on Irish country houses including Ballymaloe, Longueville, Rathsallagh and Hilton Park. Her writing appeared in The Irish Times, The Sunday Times, the Irish Independent, Irish Tatler, National Geographic, Eater, the Business Post and Food and Wine magazine. She also appeared in wine education videos explaining Cava, Prosecco and Champagne.

Corinna Hardgrave died on Monday 5 October 2026, aged 64, after an illness. The Irish Times said her death was sudden and unexpected despite the illness, and that she never missed a column. She reposed at Fanagans Funeral Home, Willbrook, Rathfarnham, on 9 October; her Requiem Mass was held at 11am on 10 October 2026 at the Church of St Pius X, Templeogue, followed by burial at Kilmashogue Cemetery. The family asked for donations, if desired, to Breast Cancer Ireland.