Eating out:If I had done a ranking of the worst value restaurants in Dublin a year or so ago, there would have been some jostling for pole position. After all, the laurels could equally apply to a modest cafe as a posh restaurant. Really crap value doesn't always mean expensive.
However, I'm quite certain that Il Primo would have been a contender. Under the previous regime the ease with which you could be submerged beneath a vast and deeply painful bill was legendary. And the food was okay.
One of our home-grown billionaires took a dozen or so colleagues for a celebratory dinner in Il Primo a few years ago and ran up a bill that was well into five figures. It seems that one member of the party was having a birthday and a cake was preordered.
When the host got the bill he was surprised, to put it mildly, that the cake had been charged for.
However, under chef Anita Thoma and manager John Farrell, who now own the restaurant, things have changed and you won't be automatically encouraged to spend a small fortune on wine. When I bumped into Thoma at Taste of Dublin recently, I asked her if she had made any changes. "Oh not much," she said, "except making the food better and the prices cheaper."
She's keen to stress that Il Primo is not really an Italian restaurant (which is a great relief as we all know what "Italian" restaurants tend to be like in Ireland) on the basis that neither John Farrell nor herself is Italian (her dad was Swiss, but she's a Dub). What you get in Il Primo these days is Italian-inspired food which would be much more familiar to the average Italian than the stuff in the red-sauce joints.
This is especially so in the case of the risottos, which are the best in Dublin, bar none. Risotto is possibly the single most abused dish in Irish restaurants and - thanks to Delia Smith's no-stir travesty - in Irish homes, too. The commonest aberration is chalky rice, which indicates beyond any reasonable doubt that the chef has never been to the Veneto.
We sampled two of Il Primo's five risottos. There was a starter portion of the shredded duck and smoked pancetta version which was impeccable in texture, perfectly seasoned (too much salt is not a substitute for proper stock) and packed with taste. With a modest grating of Parmesan over the top it was the real deal.
Our other starter was about as Italian as I am, but I'm not complaining. This comprised strips of steak tossed in grainy mustard, flashed in the pan and served with a little salad of baby rocket leaves and some shavings of Parmesan. Simple, full of taste, with a pleasing contrast of textures and just very good to eat.
Beef cropped up again in the mains, this time in the form of oxtail slowly braised in Barolo and served with some of the best fresh pasta - narrow papardelle - that I've tasted outside Italy. It had a density and chewiness, a sense of substance, that you just don't get very often. The sauce was unthickened but full of that slow-cooked flavour, and the whole thing was as wholesome as it was not terribly pretty to look at. The emphasis was firmly on what goes on in the mouth, not the plate, which reflects a refreshingly straightforward approach to presentation.
Risotto appeared again, this time with undyed smoked haddock and finely snipped chives. Again, texture was impeccable, the flavour of the fish went right through each mouthful, facilitated by an unapologetic butteriness.
With a wonderfully unsweet tiramisu and two slabs of very dense, sticky and dark chocolate cake, a couple of espressos, a €45 bottle of Chianti Classico Riserva and aperitifs, the bill came to €147. A dish of risotto with a glass of wine and a coffee would cost you about €25.
Hopefully Il Primo will soon get proper cutlery. In the old days, having to eat with stuff that looked as if it came out of a bedsit on the North Circular Road c 1975 added insult to injury, but it's really out of place now.
[ www.ilprimo.ieOpens in new window ]
Wine choice
Much of the wine list is sourced direct and there are some pleasant surprises, including a very grassy Sauvignon Fattori (€24/€7 a glass) from the Veneto and the organic Frascole Chianti Rufina (€24/€6 a glass). The massively oaked Michele Satta Viognier will appeal to lovers of New World white wines, while the fresh, fruity Castelfranci Greco di Tufo (€33/8) is more my kind of thing. Satta's Bolgheri Rosso (€34/9) is a lovely Tuscan red with plenty of cherry fruit and decent structure while our Riecine Chianti Classico Riserva (€45) was plump and oaky, very much the way Mr Parker likes it, at a pretty reasonable price.