Town and country

Memorable pre-theatre food does justice to the The Cliff Townhouse's grand surroundings in the city, writes CATHERINE CLEARY

IT SHOULD HAVE been a marriage made in restaurant heaven: a beautiful building with a big personality and a chef with a passion for Irish food. And at the start it was. I remember eating oysters with my husband at the bar in Richard Corrigan’s Bentley’s on Stephen’s Green shortly after it opened in 2008. We pretended to talk to each other but really we were listening saucer-eyed to the young Trustafarians talking loudly around us. You couldn’t get a table. The place was heaving with people behaving badly. It was a great night.

But the good times screeched to a halt and a subsequent visit was less memorable. It toppled off its short-lived perch as a favourite spot and we stopped going there.

In September the Bentley’s sign came down as Corrigan pruned his Irish operations, taking things back to his successful London base. Instead of pulling down the shutters, the building’s owner Barry O’Callaghan brought it under the flag of his Waterford operation The Cliff House Hotel, which holds the only Michelin star outside Dublin and is under Dutch chef Martijn Kajuiter.

Corrigan’s Donegal protege Sean Smith stayed in the kitchen as head chef and the trademark fish pie stayed on the menu. Touches of stardust floated up from Waterford, such as cured Glenarm salmon served in a bowl of trapped oak smoke and the Skeaghanore duck from west Cork that feature on both menus.

It’s no real challenge for two people to eat out in Dublin for under €50 these days including a glass or two of house wine for the non-driver. The secret is finding the places where the food is memorable at that price. I’ve lined up a good friend and it’s her first night out since motherhood happened. An early bite is essential to avoid anyone falling asleep at the table. But it also needs to be a venue for which it’s worth getting dressed up. We go for the pre-theatre, at €19 for two courses and €24.50 for three. (According to the website these prices have now nudged up modestly to €20 and €25).

We order two courses each and a 500ml carafe of Domaine de Montredon Picpoul de Pinet. The room is grand, with a mantel mirror, long sash windows with their original glass panes, and a gilded ornate mantel clock. A Francis Street antiques dealer is name-checked in a brass plate at the front. An elaborate modernist chandelier of folded paper and foam (a bit like an explosion in a miniature toilet paper factory) hangs down and lights shine out of blowsy golden scallop shell wall fittings. There are heavy linens and comfortable, if a little bombastic, royal blue leather banquettes and seats.

As a Belfast woman, my friend is bewildered by the slight dry hardness of the brown bread. The freshest bread is a birthright to everyone who grew up in Belfast, she explains. Anything else just doesn’t make sense. There is a nicer cheesy soda bread alongside it.

The dish of the night is the mackerel starter, a clean white plate with two rounds of mackerel that look like cartoon cuts of fish. Mackerel is a tasty but unpretty fish, usually served fried, its flesh turning a muddy yellow colour. It’s about to become more fashionable as the sustainable fishing debate ramps up. But here the flesh is pale and white from its light poaching. The body of the fish has been cut like timber in two beautiful rounds. Against all this muted silvery fishiness are cubes and larger chunks of beetroot, a beetroot puree, scatterings of cress and a quenelle of whipped cream sauce. There isn’t a huge amount of food on the plate, but I like this a lot.

We divide into his-n-hers choices for the mains: sea bream with the beurre noisette on the side for my friend, and the Jacob’s Ladder for myself. I’ve never seen it described as this in an Irish restaurant, but Jacob’s Ladder is the short ribs of beef, a combination of fatty meat with a chunk of bone attached the size and heft of a chunk broken off a Christian Brother’s ruler.

The fish comes with a crisp skin on a bed of wilted spinach, with small chunks of grapefruit on the skin, which are zingy and fresh. The browned butter has grapes and capers floating in its depths. Serving it in a small silver gravy boat allows the diner to decide whether to drench or dip. My beef is delicious, two chunks, one still on the bone, of soft braised meat, the flavour helped by bookends of fat on one side and bone on the other. It comes with chunky, thumb-sized carrots, mashed potato and mushrooms. It’s blokeish food done well. My only quibble was an over-salted gravy.

A shared dessert of carrot cake (an odd restaurant dessert as it’s more usually a coffee shop staple) also comes in two portions. The small rectangles are more like samples than portions. Our simultaneous reaction is dismay that the best part of the carrot cake (the cream cheese topping) has been replaced with a slice of carrot. But it turns out the vanilla cream cheese is on the plate, beside some nice cinnamon ice-cream.

Two pots of tea, big enough for four, allow us to linger well past pre-theatre times and watch a table of businessmen gather. One of them starts to explain the famine to his dining companion.

As we get ready to leave, they dim the lights and the place feels a bit more cosy. If there is a hint of “the-cheapskates-are-going-let-the-fun-begin” it’s probably not intended. This is a restaurant which still has two personalities rather than one, but the food on the plate is still doing justice to its grand setting. Dinner for two with a carafe of wine and two teas comes to €66.40.

Twitter.com/catherineeats

The Cliff Townhouse

22 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, 01-6383939

Facilities: Lots of stairs to climb, fake flowers in the ladies and eclectic mix of pictures

Music: Low key jazz interspersed with Sting

Wheelchair access: No

Service: Good

Food provenance: Good