VENU HAS HAD its ups and downs. It opened, three years ago, on a bit of an up and then it dipped for a while. By all accounts it has been pretty good of late.
In fact, if it were not located in a basement, on a lane off a street, in the heart of Dublin 2, it would be rocking. The €22.50 summer menu (which operates on an early bird basis on Thursday and Friday and not at all at the weekend) delivers three generous courses with which I can’t quibble.
As it is – and it was conceived in the days of boom – Venu is a destination. You need to know it’s there. You don’t go to Venu on a whim.
Being, essentially, a big subterranean room, this is a restaurant that needs artificial light. And plenty of it. It took me almost an hour to adjust to what I can only describe as a form of gloaming, and when I did, I still needed my newly acquired spectacles to read the menu and the wine list. Or, at least, I would have needed them, had I remembered to bring them with me.
As with all newly bespectacled people, I persist in the notion that I only need them when tired or when trying to tell the difference between 0s and 8s in the phone book. I find that people of my age – okay, males of my age – pretend that they use glasses only in extremis. I wish it were true.
Roberta, my youngest daughter, and I encountered David Norris as we crossed Front Square in Trinity and tried to persuade him to join us for dinner but he told us he had been hitting the quiche rather hard and could accommodate no more sustenance. He had just interviewed Patrick Guilbaud, proprietor of Venu, in addition to the more famous Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud, for Newstalk.
Roberta, I think, enjoyed propping up one of the most dramatic bars in Ireland. We marked her farewell to national school with an equally dramatic Red Berry Smash, while I got myself around (as Bertie Wooster would say) a perfectly respectable and reasonably priced gin martini.
Her prawns in ketaifi pastry with a mango salsa and mint mayonnaise were good, if a bit heavy on ketaifi and light on prawn. Sticking with the à la carte, she had an immense rib-eye steak, pretty rare and, according to herself, fine – although not as good as McGrath’s (in Lismore) or Bart’s (as we call O’Donoghue’s of Tallow). And she was right. She went so far as to say that the garlic butter and the grilled mushroom were the main tastes. Slightly flabby chips, however, had a proper, beef-dripping flavour.
I did much better. A plum tomato tart, despite a slightly heavy pastry base, was lovely, and greatly enhanced by a topping of whipped goats’ cheese with herbs.
My somewhat deconstructed chicken pie with mushrooms, smoked bacon and pearl onions, was light and pleasing (although I wished for a bit of thigh, rather than the relentless and, doubtless customer-led, big chunks of breast; oh dear, I now realise that this sounds a bit Freudian). The buttery pastry cupola was very good indeed.
My Wexford strawberries (Roberta was, in her own words, stuffed, at this stage) with vanilla and lime cream and crushed meringues, was – in the truest sense of the phrase, simply delicious.
My dinner amounted to the equivalent of good, wholesome, moderately adventurous home cooking. And it cost €22.50 without the usual home cooking problem of having to wash up.
With our aperitifs, a bottle of still water, a glass of red and a glass of white, the bill came to €94.70. Had we both had the set menu, it would have weighed in at €77.30, which I think is pretty good value, especially considering the excellent service, the grand if rather dim dining room and the city-centre location.
Venu, like most Dublin restaurants, is doing its best to deliver on value. It’s not going to do anything terribly radical but, if you stick to the special menu, it adds up to a rather cool night out with the kind of bill that would make the local “trattoria” blush. tdoorley@irishtimes.com
THE SMART MONEY
A three-course dinner and a glass of wine for less than €30. This is not rucola science.
Read Megabites, Tom Doorley’s blog on all things foodie, at irishtimes.com/blogs/megabites
House wines are much better than basic. There’s Domaine du Haut Bourg Sauvignon and Tergeo, a chunky Yecla, for €21.50, or €6.30 a glass. I would be happy with either, although I would be tempted to trade up to Domaine Lapalus Macon-Pierreclos at €29 or €7.50. Domaine de Monteillet Condrieu (€42) is magnificent in a peachy kind of way. I wouldn’t currently spend €70 on Trimbach’s Cuvéee Frédéric Émile Riesling (even though this is a fair price), preferring to splash out a theoretical €68 on Bouzereau-Gruère Meursault-Villages. Ridge Santa Cruz Cabernet (€80) is a New World grand cru, Michel Ogier’s Côte-Rôtie (€95) is majestic and Château Les-Ormes-de-Pez 2000 (€83) is an almost mature, very classic Saint-Estéphe. Best value red? Callabriga Tinta Roriz (€32) from the Douro.