Choosing a venue for a meal to mark an occasion can be a delicate balancing act. You don't want your amour to be choking on dried-out chicken while you declare your undying love. Nor do you want to deliver your killer "it's not me, it's you" line in a half-empty restaurant as the delighted waiter and other diners look on, like it's an episode of Eastenders. Birthdays need lively places. Anniversaries need romance. New job? Splash out on somewhere special.
So, what of farewell meals? When someone’s moving abroad it’s tempting to bring them to an old reliable, where you have a good idea of the menu and what to expect. But when a new restaurant chooses the name Dublin City Food, it does offer itself up as a good spot for a final taste of the capital.
Cousins Brendan O’Connor and Adam Dickinson opened Dublin City Food as a soup-and-sandwich joint on the ground floor of the Andrews Street premises last December. With each sandwich named after an area of the city ending in “o” (Pimlico, Rialto, etc) it is as Dub as could be, and smoking its own deli meats in the basement kitchen, it is also serious about food. Last month the restaurant “proper”opened on the first floor.
We arrive on an impossibly hot Friday night (how un-Dublin) and climb the rickety, tea light-strewn stairs. It feels like we’re heading into one of those comfy old Dublin flats we’ve all been in over the years. The room has distressed walls with mismatched furniture and art. The cooking is done downstairs – even the coffees are made down there – so there’s none of the usual restaurant paraphernalia on view. The CD player, blasting out funk, keeps jumping. Only two other tables are occupied, and as we’re ushered to our seats by the window, our fellow diners look up to see who’s coming in and smile. It’s all very homely and familiar.
The menu, however, is anything but, with seasonal dishes that offer a nice twist on what you’d expect from a mid-budget Dublin restaurant. There are three starters, six mains and three desserts, a daily special – a 10oz rib eye, aged for 28 days, which we’re assured will change our lives – and a neat wine list of half a dozen reds and whites, from which we order a bottle of 2012 Perrin Ventoux.
The set menu is €25 for two courses and a glass of wine, or two people can have two courses each and a bottle of wine for €60. We opt for the a la carte – mostly in fear of offending if we don’t order that rib eye.
To start, a smoked mackerel salad sounds good, but I can’t resist the truffled poached duck egg with steamed asparagus and a quenelle of dates and chorizo. The egg, served on a small piece of toast, is a little undercooked, with a slight taste of truffle. It’s been cleverly scored after poaching to look like a cracked Terry’s Chocolate Orange and goes well with the slightly bitter, smoky and chewy chorizo and date.
Dan’s Ardrahan salad is a delicate dish of tiny cubes of cheese, lambs’ lettuce, spiced orange segments, roasted almonds, slivers of asparagus and pickled radish. Blobs of dressing, more citrusy than the “garlic and honey” description, cut the nuttiness of the cheese perfectly. It is tasty and very pretty.
The main courses are substantial and explain the small size and lightness of the starters. Though tempted by braised short ribs, Dan goes for that rib eye, which is almost the size of the plate. It’s accompanied by a tangy Béarnaise with micro tarragon leaves, chips and watercress salad. It’s a fine piece of meat, nicely marbled and perfectly cooked. The chips are delicious, fluffy and enormous.
Forgoing a Dublin classic of cockles and mussels, I choose pan-fried hake. Also a large portion, it’s served in a deep dish on a lightly herbed mash, surrounded by a delicate tomato and sorrel consommé. The hake skin is buttery and crisp, and the flesh falls apart, melting into the potato and consommé. This necessitates a degree of slurping (just as well the occasion isn’t a first date), but it’s worth it.
There’s a cheese board and two desserts to choose from: grilled pineapple with piña colada sabayon is sweet, tangy and satisfying, but the macerated fruit with vanilla ice cream is particularly good, with plump, slightly tart blueberries, strawberries, blackberries and raspberries and a sablé biscuit.
Service is excellent throughout, perhaps because it’s quiet, but mostly you get the sense this is just how the place operates. The chef comes upstairs twice to ask diners how their food is; staff appear to really want you to enjoy yourself. You’re in their home, after all.
With a name like Dublin City Food, it’s really making a statement – and as a final taste of what a city has to offer, they don’t come much sweeter.
Two starters, mains and desserts with coffees, sparkling water and a bottle of wine came to €119.50.
THE VERDICT: 8/10. Good food, great service
Dublin City Food, 7 St Andrew's Street, Dublin 2, tel: 01-485 3273
Facilities: Single bathroom on top floor
Music: Varied, from funk to house
Food provenance: Connemara Hill lamb Kilmore Quay mussels, Ardrahan cheese
Wheelchair access: No
Catherine Cleary is on leave
