EATING OUT: Bustling, informal Café Bar Deli has repeated its successful formula in a second Dublin outlet, writes Tom Doorley
The good news is that Café Bar Deli does good grub at very reasonable prices. The bad news is that they charge €5.50 for 75cl of bottled water. Admittedly you can choose between de Braam and San Pellegrino, but I have just been contemplating the profit margin and I reckon it must be up there with coffee or legal work for the tribunals. Suddenly Dublin tap water has developed a certain earthy, musty, chlorinated charm. Especially with ice and lemon.
But Café Bar Deli, to be fair, does not mug you on more important items like food and wine. You can eat and drink your fill - starter, main course, pud, coffee and extortionate water - for something in the region of €70 for two. Leaving aside early-bird specials and taking the pledge, this is as good as it gets these days. Actually, let's face it: it's all too easy to eat and drink complete garbage and come out with a heftier bill.
The joy of Café Bar Deli is that the grub is good, the wine list is short but curiously seductive, the service is delightful and there is a sense that this bustling, informal restaurant is firing on all cylinders with a kind of missionary zeal. In terms of value for money, it has to be one of the small handful of Dublin eateries that is really trying.
We ate there on a Friday evening and the place was full of locals, almost without exception people who, like myself, are on the lower slopes of middle age. I suspect that most have big mortgages. Peering through the windows of other Ranelagh restaurants on the way home, I concluded that Café Bar Deli is doing serious damage to its neighbours.
Pasta and pizza. When these two words coincide they lower my spirits more effectively than an envelope marked "Revenue Commissioners". Too many restaurants consider that these two staples are easy and cheap. Done well, they certainly aren't. Cafe Bar Deli specialises in these twin carbohydrates but the difference is that they know how to do them.
Okay, we didn't have a pizza. Instead we had a pizzete - a round of pizza base liberally anointed with fresh herbs, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper. It was one of the best €3 I have spent: crisp, light, hot, jumping with sheer taste. With this we scoffed a plate of antipasti - salami, chorizo and prosciutto - with decent crusty bread and some olives.
A smoked trout salad (where has smoked trout gone since the 1980s?) was very good indeed, served in a deep white bowl with lots of crunchy leaves, small potato quarters, explosively tasty capers and freshly sliced red onion. It never ceases to amaze me that so many people in the food business don't know that onions oxidise like the clappers as soon as they are cut. The difference between a fresh onion and a rapidly decomposing one is stark. Oh yes, there was a zingy mustard dressing and a dollop of lemon-scented crème fraïche, too. This was one well-thought-out salad.
Not having eaten since breakfast, I thought that at 7 p.m. I would be equal to penne with mushrooms, smoked bacon, thyme and gorgonzola. I was wrong. This thoroughly unhealthy and equally delicious concoction defeated me by the final quadrant. Perfectly al dente pasta was liberally doused in a sauce of the sort that I would make at home were I feeling very hungry and very pro-dairy products in all their delicious forms. It did precisely what I wanted it to do, viz. fill me up.
Hence I had a relatively light dessert: whipped yoghurt and cream with mixed berries (think fruit of the forest) with crushed meringue on top, rather elegantly served in an old-fashioned cocktail glass. The salad fancier with me managed a vast slab of chocolate brownie enriched with walnuts and served with not just vanilla ice cream but chocolate sauce too.
Two espressos, a litre of house red (which was too much for us) and the eye-wateringly expensive San Pellegrino brought the bill for this feast to €74.75 excluding service.
Café Bar Deli, 62 Ranelagh Village, Dublin 6 (01-4961886)
WINE CHOICE:
There are 20 wines, most of them very sound and all fairly priced. Domaine Sainte Marthe, red and white, weigh in at €3.95 a glass, €10 for 500ml and €20 for a litre. The white is fresh and simple, the red chunky and just rustic enough. The most expensive is a Cortese from Piedmont at €25 and there's an Albariñho at a very keen €23.