Is it so hard to make good chips? Obviously so, judging by the flabby, greasy, stale-fat-tasting, fake-potato, oven-baked ones you get in so many restaurants these days. This week I had awful chips twice. The first lot was at Cafe Rouge on Andrew Street, the second at Ocean, Conrad Gallagher's just-opened seafood bar in Ringsend. More about that later.
Cafe Rouge has no excuse for serving lousy chips. It's supposed to be a French brasserie so it should serve thin, tasty pommes frites and lashings of them.
Instead, I got a miserable portion of hard, spiky chips in a nasty, brown, plastic bowl to go with my entrecote steak. They were crispy alright, but also cold. All around people were eating chips and no two plates looked the same. Some chips were white and droopy, some an unpleasant deep-brown colour. A bit of quality control wouldn't go amiss here, and not just in the chips department.
Cafe Rouge opened to a great fanfare of publicity a couple of years ago. I had never eaten there and presumed, unfairly as it turned out, that it was just for the tourists who flock out of the St Andrews Church tourist centre next door. Though it is part of an English chain of restaurants, it looks authentically French with its warm, smoky atmosphere, wooden floor and tables, red banquettes and, crucially, real French waiters in long white aprons. In fact, it's more attractive than many a French brasserie. It's a long bright room with mellow, yellow walls hung with colourful posters and naive pictures of little girls who might have strayed out of the Madeleine books. We were seated right at the back, in the no-smoking, family-friendly section (three quarters of the restaurant is smoking territory). Several high-chairs were piled up against a wall, and at least six youngsters were tucking in with their parents.
Our table was in the middle of the room beside the service station, but when I asked for a slightly better table on one of the banquettes against the wall we were told by our waitress - who was very surly - that it was for four, though since all it was two tables for two pushed together, there shouldn't have been a problem. Then the table stayed empty for the next hour so we could have had it after all.
We were sharing a starter of spicy Mediterranean sausage with couscous and when it arrived and we asked for two plates, she slapped her hand on the service station when there were no spare plates stacked there. Glad she wasn't my au pair.
The sausage and couscous mix was chilly and uninteresting and we were looking forward to more substantial main courses. Sheila got a good one - confit of duck with dauphinoise potatoes and peas a la francaise. A sizeable duck leg appeared on a bed of creamy potato, with fat peas arranged around the edge of the plate. The duck was very tender and the potatoes were nicely laced with garlic. The peas were of the French tinned variety.
My steak was an absolute rip-off at £11.25. It was a long, thin bit of meat with lots of fat and gristle sitting in a lake of pepper sauce. As I chewed my way through it, I could see the children at the next table being served with what looked to me like the exact same cut of meat, without sauce but with salad, for just £4.95.
In fact, children do very well here. There are two menus for them, one at £3.95 for the very young with a choice of bangers and mash, chicken nuggets and chips or omelette at £3.95 (including ice cream and a drink) and one for "little grown-ups" at £4.95 offering salmon fishcake, grilled chicken breast, that steak and chips, or pasta with pesto, and a mineral and ice cream. So you could take a whole brood here for about the same price as McDonalds, say.
The sensible thing for adults to do is just have one simple dish, such as the crocque monsieur (a big, fat, toasted ham and cheese sandwich with chips for £4.65), a goat's cheese salad at £5.80 or the very decent cheese plate which has generous slices of Brie, Port Salut and a blue cheese with strips of celery, lots of grapes and a basket of sliced baguette for a reasonable £4.30.
A huge, puffed-up profiterole stuffed with ice-cream and drenched in chocolate was right up Sheila's street since she can't abide cream. With two coffees, mineral water and two glasses of decent house wine the bill came to a ridiculously high £50.49 - a price no French person would tolerate for a brasserie lunch.
Later in the week, it was on to Ocean, a swish new cafe-bar and restaurant overlooking the Grand Canal Basin at the foot of the white apartment-tower-block at Charlotte Quay. It has only been open for a couple of weeks and while the main restaurant - to be called Fish - isn't finished yet, you can have a meal in the bar or in the fish bar.
That's if you feel like pushing your way past the black-clad bouncer with the built-in ear-piece, which suggests he's tuned into some crime-busting network. Is it really necessary to have a heavy like this wandering around an expensive restaurant . . . in case, what - that the place is going to be overrun with uncool people? Or gangsters trying to stuff the cutlery down their jumpers? In fact, we didn't encounter the bouncer until later in the evening and were met at the door by a really charming maitre d' who explained that we could have food in the bar, or in the fish bar, where they plan to serve things such oysters and champagne but will also do you a fish and chips.
Fish and chips at £12.95 should be downright exquisite and in fact the fish was very good - firm white cod in a light crunchy batter. But it came in true Conrad Gallagher style, sitting on top of the chips. When I pulled them free they were already soggy, but at least they were made from real potatoes. Bernice's squid rings were similarly battered and her chips on the side came with a criss-cross dressing of aoili. They were soggy too - I felt they hadn't been twice-fried as all chips should be.
The only other diners also ordered chips and theirs came stacked up side by side into a tower, rather like a game of Jenga. For God's sake, they're only chips! Still, the waterside setting is very pretty and this cafe will come into its own in the summer when the wall of windows is pulled open. But Ocean? Sure it sounds better than Basin but it's a bit cheeky. And while the bar has a great view across the water the downstairs restaurant, Fish, won't have any view at all.
Cafe Rouge, 1 Andrew Street, Dublin 1, 01-6791357; Ocean Bar and Restaurant, Charlotte Quay Dock, Dublin 4, 01 6688862
