EATING OUT: The clubby café's roast in a roll is an institution, but there's always room for improvement, writes Tom Doorley
People are pretty passionate about Gruel. That's why it's so full of regulars that it feels like a club - one that, if you're very good, you may be invited to join. It's also why its fans are prepared to overlook its more obvious shortcomings. Such as the cramped, rather gloomy space and, on occasion, service so cool it can condense your breath in front of your face.
The odd thing is that Gruel doesn't seem quite at home in Dublin. It's not just the rather foreign notion of taking simple food seriously - 'twas far from that we wuz rared - it's also the sense that you've been transported to a café full of creatives in somewhere like Greenwich Village or, perhaps, SoHo.
It is famous for its soups and its Roast in a Roll, an institution so venerated by an ocean of admirers (the Gruel sea?) that it deserves initial capitals, like all proper nouns. The ham with home-made piccalilli and grainy mustard is, they say, the stuff of lunchtime legends, and lately there has been talk of proper corned beef (not the pink brick in a can) with some class of beetroot pickle. Sounds good to me. Roast pork with apple sauce is another version of which Gruel aficionados speak with misty eyes. They tend to know the Roast in a Roll, er, rota by heart. If it's Tuesday it's got to be . . . That kind of thing.
I suspect the roast beef is the only low point in the week, at least judging by the state of it on the day of my visit. Like all Roasts in a Roll it came in a fine, manly bap, and the slather of creamy horseradish and generous dollop of red pesto were splendid. But what was this? Overdone, dry, chewy meat when even a cautiously medium-rare version would have been almost celestial? Perhaps the great Irish public is not yet ready for pink roast beef. Perhaps Gruel has tried and failed to convert its customers to succulence. I don't know. But overdone beef and rare, even slightly pink beef are entirely different experiences. They could come from different animals.
In the interests of being able to file a proper report, we ordered so much that we were advised by the bloke on the cash register to desist. But we persevered. Two slices of pizza - not really pizza, actually, but shallow focaccia with toppings - were very good indeed. One had onion, anchovy and Parmesan, the other red onion, pepper and courgette. No tomato. This pizza was very pure and very tasty.
The deli roll of the day contained plenty of crisp, well-dressed baby rocket, a generous round of goats' cheese and some roast red pepper. It was nearly perfect, in a simple, stripped-down kind of way.
Soup is served in very generous helpings accommodated in old-fashioned pudding bowls. Roast tomato and basil was pretty good, especially for this time of the year, when the average tomato is more orange than red and even less flavoursome than usual. The roasting probably helps to concentrate the taste.
A shared chocolate brownie of unusual richness and silkiness was downed with a couple of decent espressos. With four glasses of wine and half a litre of mineral water, the damage for this far too substantial lunch came to just under €50. But I have to stress that we went to exceptional lengths to sample what Gruel is up to. In fact, you can eat very pleasantly at Gruel for a tenner.
Many customers seem to come just for the salads, which, judging solely by appearance, seem to be among the best and most imaginative in the city.
The evening is a different kettle of fish: Gruel becomes somewhat more of a restaurant than a caff or deli. There are people who refuse to eat anywhere else. I suspect that once you get the hang of Gruel it does become curiously homely.
Gruel, 67 Dame Street, Dublin 2, 01-6707119
WINE CHOICE It's not much of a choice, really, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. There's a red, a Sangiovese, and a white, a Trebbiano, both called Villa Magna and hailing from Italy. At €18 a bottle they are very drinkable; indeed, they are among the better house wines I've encountered in quite a while, and they cover all the wine-drinking necessities of somewhere like Gruel. A bottle for €18 is a good buy. A titchy tumbler for €4 isn't. The four of these we put away came to less than half a bottle, which suggests Gruel's profit on wine by the glass is whopping. The industry norm is five or six glasses from a bottle, not eight or more.