The Woollen Mills: delicious blast of fresh air

Dear Dublin City Council did you you really have to act like a teenager and trash the place when I was away? Yes the Luas extension will be great. But you’ve bombed the city’s good room and the visitors look bewildered as they pick their way round the rubble.

Coming home from a prettier city isn’t easy. Dublin is a dump, I declare hotly after a heart-thumping bike ride round College Green. Only I don’t use the word dump. Hours later in a room overlooking a sunlit iron bridge my relationship with the city clambers off the rocks. I’ve strolled to the Woollen Mills with my dad, who realises he’s never looked properly at the Ha’penny bridge until now.

We’re in the unadorned upstairs room, an oddly shaped space carved into two areas by a huge chimney wall which still has a safe set into it from its time as the offices of the old Dublin haberdashery. The starkness continues with heavy black steel and wood chairs which look like they’ll be hard work for a long stay but are oddly comfortable.

I want to like the food. Not least because I like Elaine Murphy, the restauranteur here, and one of Dublin’s great women. I’ve had two reports from friends. “Looks impressive even if they are still finding their feet a little,” was the first. A simple “Loved it,” was the second.

It’s a big beast of an operation with people eating in every corner of the place, both inside and out. The wait staff have to work hard climbing stairs and making regular appearances so the quieter nooks don’t feel forgotten.

There’s a wait, which we fill happily with a summery Lombeline sauvignon blanc served in a 50cl glass bottle. The wine has been decanted from their own cask, as several of the wines (marked with a “c” on the menu) are here.

The menu is a four-parter: fish, meat, vegetables and Gruel. The last one takes some explaining to the tourists beside us. It’s a tribute to the dear-departed Dame Street restaurant of that name that served Mammy-cooking for years.

Like the building, the Woollen Mills menu is quirky and ambitious, with little that’s predictable or safe. The meat, fish and vegetable dishes have hero ingredients laced through them like fancy trimmings. We’re not in McBistroland anymore. The first wow is a Dr Seuss dish. Move over green eggs and ham we’ve got pink eggs and tongue. They’re ox tongue fritters, thin pink patties covered in a crisp crust, a bit of cow that tastes like ham. The pink eggs have been pickled in beetroot and then roughly jumbled together with a slick of horseradish mayonnaise. It sounds heavy but it’s not thanks to the beetroot sweetness and horseradish heat.

The other meat dish is pigs on the green, a lettuce leaf filled with Young Buck blue cheese dressing. Mike Thompson who makes Young Buck, Northern Ireland’s first raw milk blue cheese, has a backstory as brilliant as his cheese, having crowdfunded the capital to start his business. Here it’s a luscious bedfellow to lightly spiced pork in crisp lettuce cups.

My line-caught Howth mackerel is a pure treat. It’s the best piece of fish I’ve eaten in Dublin. Someone has been at work with a tweezers to make the bones disappear and the skin has been fried Tayto-crisp without letting the flesh get leathery. There’s a salad of purple potatoes with more horseradish in the dressing and a lime slaw to add a perfect ping of sourness. The weakest dish (and only because the rest has been so good) is a leek and mussel pate which has a thick pale butter lid that looks like the white chocolate on a Magnum. But a good squeeze of lemon gets its flavours singing. Superb sides come as stem broccoli with peanut sauce and a jumble of giant cous cous salad with pomegranate, peas, broad beans and feta.

The best of a plate of three desserts is a peanut and chocolate tart with elderflower custard which I’m determined to leave more space for on my next visit. My dad’s verdict? “An adventure and all of it good.”

On a day that started for me at 4am and included a Ryanair flight and several loads of washing, I arrived at the Woollen Mills tired and cheesed off. I leave feeling great. If that isn’t a sign that dear old Dublin’s got herself a great new restaurant then hand me my hat and some horseradish dressing.

Dinner for two with two 50cl carafes of wine came to €97.45.

THE VERDICT: 8.5/10 Brilliant. A blast of fresh briny air through Dublin’s restaurant scene

The Woollen Mills Eating House, 42 Lr Ormond Quay, Dublin 1, tel: 01-8280835

Facilities: Unisex with magnificent taps

Music: Great and not too loud

Food provenance: Exemplary. Gold River Farm leaves, Young Buck cheese and that Howth mackerel

Wheelchair access: Yes

Vegetarian options: Good