I ’m stumped. It’s a sunny day in the city and I’m heading for a working lunch with two colleagues. But we’ve arrived to find the shutters down and the blackboards neatly stacked away at our chosen spot.
A business lunch in the heart of shirtsleeves Dublin is a treat for me. My typical lunch is salad from the garden and leftovers from the fridge. So queuing for a sandwich and finding a patch of park grass won’t cut it.
Plan B comes in the shape of Brasserie Le Pont, a French basement restaurant on the corner of Fitzwilliam Street and Leeson Street. And it has a garden at the back. Until now this space has been for smokers and those willing to swaddle themselves in snuggly blankets or have their heads broiled by a gas heater.
The Georgian buildings looming around us mean it’s a pleasant cool patio rather than a squinty sun-baked spot. Yes, just two days of sun and we’re blasé about all that warmth from the sky.
As we don’t really do summers, most Irish restaurants don’t really do outdoor spaces. Even in smarter places they can be as forlorn as an old ashtray, because in effect that’s what they are. But not this one.
It’s pristine, with a white wisteria growing up a painted trellis behind us. Flowers spill out of window boxes and the iron chairs are comfied up with cushions and those fleecy blankets, more recently used for insulation purposes. You can sit here and imagine a Dublin where everyone wears linen and a smile, rather than Gortex and a grimace.
With one exception, our lunch choices are equally summery. I get a starter portion of Dublin bay prawn risotto.
It’s a gorgeous rendition of rice drenched in buttery saffron flavour with tiny chives cut through it. Butter-fried prawns sit on top, sprinkled with micro coriander. It’s served in a beautiful wide-brimmed bowl and is as close to perfect as you’ll get.
Juliana’s large portion of asparagus risotto is a grass -green plate of loveliness. The menu says wild garlic and there are shards of green through it, which taste almost aniseedy and delicious.
Small chunks of perfectly cooked asparagus, sunny yellow pieces of courgette and a large Parmesan tuile top it off. The finishing touch is a generous sprinkling of perfectly toasted pine nuts for crunch and nutty warmth.
Claire’s fish pie is the more wintery choice; an oval bowl of fish, smoked and unsmoked, with peas in cream topped with tiny mounds of piped potato that look like a nubbly bedspread baked to a crisp on top. It’s tasty and comes with a lightly dressed green salad.
A dessert special of sticky toffee pudding with rum and raisin ice cream lands on the table with the thud of three-days worth of treat calories.
Claire womanfully manages half of it and I help with the rest. I have a cocktail glass of lavender Bavarois which is Provence in a glass. It’s got leathery blackberries entombed in jelly, topped with the yellow set lavender cream and finished with toasted flaked almonds.
Lunch standards are generally set lower than those we expect of dinner, and especially when it’s a quick bite before heading back to the car, office or kitchen. But this plan B turned out to be nothing like sloppy seconds. Brasserie Le Pont hits the nail on the head with classic sure-footed French cook in a professionally run restaurant. The fact that it has a lovely patio garden is an added bonus for a city restaurant.
Lunch for three with sparkling water, tea and two desserts came to €58.60.
