Charlotte Quay review: third time lucky for this quayside restaurant?

It’s a head scratcher. You have one of Dublin’s best dining rooms looking out on a shinier, glossier place, a city less grizzled and down on itself. Yet this place has failed and then, as a famous Dubliner might have put it, failed better. Will it be third time a charm?

I’m in Charlotte Quay which is on Charlotte Quay, the ground floor restaurant of the Millennium Tower, a building whose name has dated about as well as a pair of orange bell bottoms.

The Ocean Bar was here first, back when the boom was booming. Ocean dried up when the money tap was turned off. Then the ground floor went dark for years until we had found the run of ourselves again and the Mourne Seafood Bar took over. It was an older, soberer place.  I loved the food, swooned about the view, but it didn’t stick and the Mourne closed its doors.

Now Conor and Marc Bereen, the brothers behind Coppinger Row and the South William Bar, have arrived at the docks to sink or swim. And from the looks of the crowd here on a midweek night, it’s a ducks-to-water transition.

There have been some wobbles. A phone call to book a table earlier in the day went unanswered (and still is at the time of writing). The website seemed to want me to eat sometime in November so I’ve just rocked up early with a friend. There’s a booking in her name coincidentally in half an hour, but we fess up that’s not us and take a consolation seat at the bar.

As review seats go it’s going to be all about the food. We have our backs to glass and the water beyond so no heads will be turned by That View. The pale pine and white walls of the Mourne have been mood-boarded out of existence. The bar is chrome and clad with curvy concrete tiles. There are brass bag hooks set along it and the padded stools are armchair comfortable. There are distressed mirrors, gallons of grown-up grey paint and one wall of honeycomb slate tiles.

Crisp white-and-red tea towel-sized napkins arrive with cutlery tucked inside. The almost entirely male staff are just as presentable, a very easy-on-the-eye group of employees.

So is it Coppinger Row-on-sea when it comes to the menu? Kind of. There’s the same easy-on-the-wallet pre-theatre deal, a €22 two-courser and €26 for three. The €8 supplement for a steak and the charges for side dishes takes that swiftly upwards. But still, choose carefully and you can be home and hosed for bargain money.

More importantly, the food is very good. The first bite is a plate of petal-thin raw tuna with lip-stinging flecks of fresh chilli and scallion diced over it. There’s a sweet, subtle mirin (I’m guessing) and citrusy soy dressing over the whole thing and I’m in my happy place. Another plate features cloudy mouthfuls of dill-laced ricotta parcelled in house pasta with lemon butter and crisp salad.

That hanger steak, charred black and smoky on the outside but still juicily pink inside, is worth the extra. Chips do what chips do and good parmesan with those telltale tooth-crunching grains is sliced thinly over the rocket salad.

A cauliflower couscous is the only slight let-down. The couscous element itself has nailed it. Making cauliflower nutty by adding actual nuts in the shape of almonds and peanuts is a good thing. There are blowsy yellow sultanas, cranberries and spice to lift it all. But a wedge of roasted cauliflower balanced on top, yellowed with spice but not melting enough in texture, is a brassica too far. I console myself by eating all the roast fennel that comes topped with with top notch chermoula, the herby green spiced sauce. “In fairness. Cauliflower? What did you expect?” the friend says.

There’s an excellent if small pistachio cake with lemon curd and raspberries fresh and in the form of a terrific sorbet. My charred peaches with fig and amaretto is a bowlful of Christmas. In a very good way. Boozy cinnamon-laced fruit makes me feel like a wasp ending its days burrowed into a forgotten peach.

Charlotte Quay feels like a place that knows exactly what it wants to be: a smart city bar and restaurant serving great food. Let’s make this a keeper third time round.

Dinner for two, with two glasses of wine, a glass of prosecco and a mint tea came to €91.70.

CHARLOTTE QUAY, Millennium Tower, Dublin 4; (01) 9089490
Music: Loudish but good
Food provenance: None
Vegetarian options: Good
Facilities: Downstairs. Swanky
Wheelchair access: Yes
THE VERDICT: Feels like third time lucky for a great docklands restaurant