Asador is a new restaurant that actually looks like a restaurant, rather than a living room or a shop, writes CATHERINE CLEARY

Forget what the butler saw. What the maitre-d’ heard is probably more telling. This is tonight’s lesson as I dine with someone who can read a restaurant like a book. When maitre-d’ John Healy walked the length of the Four Seasons dining room, the Dublin 4 restaurant was a Tom Wolfe tome. Health problems ending in a heart transplant took Healy off the stage just as the curtains fell on some of his customers, the men who had more cheap credit and risky gambles than the rest of us had hot dinners.

On a calmer Monday night we’re in his “neighbourhood restaurant” on Haddington Road, a new venture by former One Pico restaurant manager Shane Mitchell, with chef Eric Mooney. It’s called Asador, which sounds like the punchline to a Tommy Cooper joke but is, in fact, a bit of kitchen equipment. The Asador is a 7ft stainless steel fire pit, a barbecue with bells on, the kind of thing people might have installed in their “outdoor room” back in the day. It’s a manly idea and a manly restaurant, fitted out with beautiful oak floors and curved cream leather banquettes. It’s got a “good dress and heels” feel to it.

The ground floor space has the feeling of something that has been here a while. It opened just last month. And even on a Monday night it’s busy. Although the night of the week may be a factor when we’re told both John’s choices, the beef carpaccio and the swordfish, are off. But there’s tuna instead, which sounds good.

It’s only when I’m reading a large menu in a well-lit room that I realise how much candlelight I’ve been peering through in other recently-opened restaurants. It’s got a corporate, grown-up look that’s almost quaint in the days of found furniture and tealights in jars. It doesn’t look like a gallery or a living room or a shop. It looks like a restaurant.

A potted crab starter comes in a pillbox-sized Kilner jar, a thin, soft, skin of butter on top of the delicate crab meat. There are small sourdough toasts and a finely-chopped cornichon mayonnaise. It’s a simple bistro classic, all three boxes – tang, creamy sweetness and crunch – ticked. John’s starter is a mozzarella burrata, a voluptuous liquid cheese presented a little like a goldfish in a bag, the first fork prong releasing a flow of delicate milkiness that pools alluringly around the other ingredients, folds of Parma ham and focaccia croutons topped with an excellent basil pesto.

Luscious tuna slices lie on top of John’s main course, with a dark raw square in the middle of each, no mean feat cooked on a fire. It sits on what he says is the nicest Nicoise salad he’s had, perfect lemon-marinated, china white anchovies, a quartered softly-boiled egg, French beans, fresh leaves and good waxy spuds. A side of chips is cooked not twice but three times and the result is a crunchy orange layer that’s almost thicker than the fluffy potato inside.

My pork has been “Adobo-rubbed”. When I ask, I’m told it’s a dry spice rub. Some post-dinner research tells me that adobo is a Spanish method of immersing raw food in a spiced stock with garlic and vinegar, a kind of flavoursome brining used to preserve meat in the days before fridges. I’d have preferred this dish if they had gone the traditional wet route. The pork meat is dry and tough, and could have done with soaking up some marinade before being fire-grilled. It comes with a good pickled red cabbage and an oniony relish with golden sultanas that almost make up for it.

The surprise here is that nothing tastes very barbecued, apart from a side of corn-on-the-cob which has been charred and buttered to a dribble-down-the-chin treat. Desserts are chocolate fondant “rich and dark and luscious, like something you’d eat in the Georges Cinq,” John says, and an apple crème brûlée, which is a little less decadent, with syrupy cubes like something you’d find at the bottom of a Mr Kipling tart.

Despite this, Asador is impressive, in these early days. Good for gossipy nights and a spot of people-watching.

Dinner for two with two bottles of sparkling water (€4.50 each) came to €97.20.

Asador

1 Victoria House, Haddington Road, Dublin 4, tel: 01- 254 5353

Music: Easy listening

Food provenance: Not much. Ryefield goats’ cheese a lone name

Facilities: Bronze-black mosaic

Wheelchair access: Yes

SECOND HELPING

They had me at hello with the open fire on the first floor of the Vintage Cocktail Club in Temple Bar’s Crown Alley. This speakeasy (no sign, just the letters VCC on the door) is a flowery carpeted, flock wallpapered time machine taking us back to an era somewhere between 1920 and 1960.

There’s nothing retro about the prices, which hover upwards of the €10 per cocktail.

But a cucumber gimlet was delicious and part of the fun is in watching the drinks being prepared. Some of them have things spritzed on them from hand-sanitising bottles before you drink them.

The only shame is that they didn’t get some crystal perfume bottles with puff-ball spritzers to finish it off, Miss Piggy style. Mwah.

The Vintage Cocktail Club, 15 Crown Alley, Temple Bar, Dublin 2