Take your eye off Dublin for a few months and another bit of it starts blossoming. When was the last time you went down to Smithfield? A few years ago you might have been afraid to go near it, bar the odd, quick foray to the fruit and veg market, or the parking fines court. It was piebald country, the subject of many a sensitive photo essay about poor children and broken-down horses. Now it's full of smart new buildings, luxury apartments, cafes and restaurants.
I went with a friend to explore the Chief O'Neill's complex that has been built around the old Jameson distillery and to see the new lamps that soar up over Smithfield.
We wandered down on a perishing day and the lamps and the tower looked remarkable against the snow-threatening sky.
We had a quick look inside the new Chief O'Neill's hotel cafe where apparently you get traditional music some nights. By day, most of the tables are filled with surveyors and developers. We took cover quickly in Duck Lane, a new covered lane-cum-shopping centre with a cafe and a shop selling Irish bits and pieces, clothes and things for the home. It's like the Kilkenny shop at one end and Habitat at the other and there wasn't a soul in it.
In fact there's an air of suspended animation about the revamped Smithfield. All they need is the tourists, and presumably the tourists will come in the summer.
Duck Lane is a very slick-looking venture, and the open-plan cafe is a nice, bright sort of place - but, if you are staying for lunch, skip the lasagne. Mine was hideous stuff - a slice of wobbly meat and bechamel sauce with a heavy topping of freshly grated cheddar. Maybe the oven had broken down, or maybe that's just how they serve it. Either way it just won't do. It came with an avalanche of green salad with wet lettuce and no dressing. Ugh!
Judging by the half-full bowls which were still standing on empty tables, people didn't much like their soup either, and the staff were slow to tidy up.
Newspapers on sticks are provided, but it's impossible to read the damn things if you are sitting at a small round table, and anyway the stick part running down the spine means you can't read the inner part of the pages. We had much better luck in Kelly & Ping, a new pan-Asian restaurant next door.
Kelly & Ping - they borrowed the name from a cheerful Chinese in New York's East Village - is aimed at business people and barristers in the area. You could also take a bunch of kids there at the weekend because the staff seem nicely laid back and the menu is short and easy to understand. Actually, it is very short, with a few lunchtime specials on one side of the menu and a range of colour-coded curries - red for very hot, yellow for mild - on the other.
It's a smart glass-fronted place with walls at odd angles painted in acid colours - a look that's a wee bit passe now. A long bar takes up most of the front of the restaurant and you can also see the chef at work at his stainless steel station. We were seated behind a dividing wall looking towards the back of the restaurant where there was a trio of fish tanks.
Starters were very good value at £2 each. I had a small salad with fresh squid rings scattered on top and what there was of it tasted very good. The salad was well dressed with a zingy, citrusy dressing, and the squid was tender. Jack had a more substantial starter of strips of roast pork belly, also with salad, and he found the meat aromatic and tender. The main courses come in generous white porcelain bowls on little trays, with rice, soup or noodles on the side.
Not wanting any nasty surprises, I asked for a mild chicken curry and got just that - a pale, creamy dish scented with coconut and coriander with big, identifiable chunks of chicken breast. It was a generous portion and there was plenty of rice too, which makes a change. So many Thai and Chinese restaurants serve tiny little dishes or pots of rice - the cheapest food on earth - then dole it onto your plate as though it's caviar. Here you get your own big bowl, so there's no sharing.
They say you're supposed to drink Gewurztraminer with spicy food but instead we had a bottle of the delightful-sounding Bend in the River Riesling. It comes in a very trendy-looking, heavy-bottomed bottle and tastes light and inoffensive. Everyone else in the restaurant was having beer and there's a great selection of local brews as well as Thai, Chinese and Japanese beers such as Cobra, Asahi, and Singa.
Jack's Nasi Goreng looked like a big bowl of special, fried rice with flecks of meat and shredded vegetables and it came with soup on the side. He gave it the thumbs up and ate every last bit.
Most people had left by the time we finished our main courses, so we skipped coffee and had it instead at Panem on the way back up the quays towards the city centre. This chic, little bakery and cafe on Ormond Quay has featured before on these pages but it deserves a second round of praise. A fabulous waft of fresh coffee and fresh baking greets you as you swing through the door, away from the hellish noise of traffic outside. The coffee is very good, and they'll serve it any way you like. Then there are all those delicious buttery biscuits, brioches and croissants. I had a fresh almond croissant, kidding myself that it would be the last thing to pass my lips that day. It was gorgeous and in a completely different league to those soggy corner-shop Cuisine de France croissants.
Earlier in the week, I dropped into the Green Street Bar, behind the vegetable market, for a quick lunch. I must declare an interest here because it is owned by a friend, Will Higgins. He set out to serve pub food with a difference and several months down the line he is building up a solid clientele.
The local cafes, which open in the early hours to serve the market traders, do a very good line in sausage and bacon sandwiches. Will has taken things a bit further. He serves fresh soups, grilled chicken and Mediterranean vegetables in focaccio and high froth capuccinos. Seek it out if you like healthy food and clean air.
Lunch for two at Kelly & Ping came to £40. Kelly & Ping, Chief O'Neill's Hotel, Smithfield, Dublin 7. Tel 01 817 3840
Orna Mulcahy can be contacted at omulcahy@irish-times.ie
