Mid market Italian restaurant for the Green

EATING OUTBARRY CANNY, the owner of the popular Peploes bistro, will open a second restaurant on Dublin's St Stephen's Green later this year, as competition for prime property among the city's top restaurateurs continues to intensify.

Last week celebrity chef Richard Corrigan announced he too was moving onto the square after securing the lease for Browne's Brassiere. The Michelin-star chef is expected to model his new restaurant, which will open in June, on Bentley's Bar and Grill, his London seafood powerhouse.

Rather than compete with near neighbours Thornton's and Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud, Corrigan is pitching for the middle market.

Canny is also targeting this sector with his latest venture, Fellini's. Named after the revered director of La Dolce Vita, the wine bar and restaurant will trade out of the former Bank of America building on St Stephen's Green and will seat around 90 people.

According to Canny, an industry veteran who founded Browne's Brasserie and Hotel in the late 1990s and then sold the business to the Stein group in 2003, the menu will feature "international Italian" cuisine, which he claims has not yet been served in Ireland, and key ingredients as well as the full wine list, will be sourced directly from Italy.

As with Peploes, Canny is displaying an obsessive attention to detail. He has commissioned an "important Irish artist" to paint a fresco on the restaurant wall. Many of the furnishings are reproductions or restored antiques by some of Italy's finest craftsmen, while the floors will be a mixture of marble, slate and wood. "The idea," Canny says, "is to make it look as if we've been there for 80 years."

But such finery comes at a price. Canny expects the fit-out bill on Fellini's to hit €2.5 million, after initially budgeting for €2.1 million. However he justifies the additional expense by claiming that in the "restaurant industry, first impressions count for everything".

Although Canny was approached by a number of developers asking him to open a second business, he says he never contemplated anything other than a "prime pitch".

So when developer Garrett Kelleher paid just under €16 million for the former Bank of America building last September, Canny and he had already agreed the mock Georgian office block would be a suitable location for Fellini's.

Yet despite the soaring overheads on his latest venture, Canny says the menu will be firmly priced at the "middle-market".

Sticking to a medium price bracket, while offering good quality food in a stylish setting is a strategy that has served Canny well in the past. And if all goes to plan, Fellini's should prove to be another sweet success for the seasoned restaurateur.