Underground gem on Clare Street

I'm in love with a new bike. If Farrow & Ball made high nellies they'd look like my new lady bike. Never underestimate the power of nostalgia. When they put it out front, the bike shop guy had to fend off two people before I arrived. It was partly the weather, he explained. As the blossoms burst women's thoughts turn to new bikes, apparently. Old-style new bikes.

I’ll feel a twinge leaving the old steed at the trade-in workshop and pedalling away on my fake nostalgia model. The old bike once carried a child seat front and back. But my passengers have their own bikes now. We’re all moving on.

I visit the new bike on the way to dinner on Clare Street, in Dublin’s city centre, and I’m struck by how dead this beautiful old city district is after dark. Frank McDonald wrote in this paper recently about efforts to reinvent Dublin’s grand Georgian living space. And tonight the only life is in the basement restaurant I’m headed to: the Blackboard Bistro.

It’s across from the old Greene’s bookshop, which has been repainted with old-school sign-lettering on the stonework to make it look like a shirt shop has always been there. But we nostalgics, who remember queuing glumly for school books, know better.

Down its steep wooden steps, the Blackboard Bistro is old-school. The kitchen is behind the scenes, a distant idea rather than a showpiece. The lampshades are glass jars, which might have been repurposed from a home-brewing kit. The small room is painted and papered in tasteful greige, with mirrors on one wall. The tables and chairs are dark wood and the cutlery rests on a rolled-up, heavy linen napkins.

The good news is wine by the bottle is half-price tonight (a Tuesday and Wednesday wheeze). The other good news is the menu is not littered with predictable dishes, those McBistro cliches that make you want to hunt down the chef who first teamed beetroot with goats cheese.

There follows a meal of two halves: super starters, mains that don’t dazzle quite so much, and a cracking dessert.

A tongue salad (stifle the urge to giggle as you order it) is a warm circle of buttery potatoes and cubes of soft beautifully cooked ox tongue. The heat from the spuds wafts up through the raw red onion slices and sprig of fresh tarragon balanced on top. Every element on the fork works. A poached free-range egg sits atop another meaty salad, this time of smoked pork belly lardons. The tangy green dressed salad, smoke, pig and salt make a great set of flavours, the eggy finish bringing it together.

The rib-eye steak is the best of the mains, combining the two elements that make a great steak: a good piece of meat and expert cooking. Unfortunately it's served on cubed and fried potatoes that are too oily. My Clare Island salmon fillet is a decent piece of fish but it's topped with a sticky brown sweet sauce. Described on the menu as a hazelnut jus, it's too wintery and meaty for the salmon. A bundle of French beans has been tied with a ribbon of carrot like a mini sheaf of wheat. A quenelle of cauliflower puree sails like a boat across the plate, a stick of fresh thyme for its mast.

My dessert, a glass of lemon sorbet with thinly shredded fresh basil, is lovely. It has the grassy notes of a summer’s day when your icepop fell in the grass and you brushed it off and kept eating.

There’s a lot to like about the Blackboard Bistro, not least the value (€28 for two courses and that nifty midweek wine deal). It’s a good neighbourhood restaurant in a place with no night-time neighbours. Afterwards we head into the night and a chance meeting with old friends in Toners pub, entering a timewarp of way too much fun on a school night.

Dinner for two with a bottle of white and a glass of red came to €91.

THE VERDICT: 6.5/10 Creative bistro cooking in a friendly Dublin basement
Blackboard Bistro, 4 Clare St, Dublin 2 Tel: 01-6766839
Facilities: Unisex and small
Music: Old-school oldies
Food provenance: Good. Mulloys of Howth for fish, O'Mahoney Meats
Wheelchair access: No

SECOND HELPING...
Efforts to eat like President Obama were thwarted when I found the restaurant at the Lough Erne Golf Resort outside Enniskillen closed at lunchtime. The location for last year's G8 summit was crammed, despite its recent rocky financial history. We settled for bar food in the Blarney Bar. The overall impression? Fine but pricey for the size of the portions. A £10 (€12.15) smoked salmon salad with a boxty cake went down well but was not much more than a few mouthfuls. I did better with a kilner jar of potted salmon and crab for £8 (€9.70) but the portion of toasted slices of soda farl was on the skimpy side. Two coffees at £3.50 (€4.25) apiece and a 10 per cent service charge brought us up to £27.50 (€33.40) for lunch. And my American friend's verdict on the place? "It's like America." Which is probably the whole idea.