It's halfway there

The beautifully redesigned restaurant at the Morrison Hotel sadly does not stand the taste test, writes CATHERINE CLEARY

Take one picnic basket. Sit a large golden Labrador on top. Et voilà Eton Mess, that mush of broken meringue, whipped cream and strawberries. So goes the myth about the famous dessert. Tonight I’m struggling to eat a sundae that tastes like an accident with a bucket of popcorn and a melted Snickers ice cream. Multiplex Mess. Sadly it’s not a great thing. Not even close.

I’m in the newly-reopened Morrison Hotel on Dublin’s Ormond Quay. And a meal that started out well has become a train wreck. This hardly ever happens. If a kitchen can wow you with starters, you’re usually in safe hands.

The hotel is open again after a dramatic redesign. John Rocha’s tobacco brown man cave has been swept into a folder marked: boom history. Now it’s bright, light Scandi-chic with lots of bleached or painted timber and glamorous clusters of lights. The restaurant is on the right of the lobby. A curved tiled kitchen space sits where, I think, a bar used to be. Chefs in aprons hover here. Two Scottish women giggle with the waiter over the idea of watching a man “slaving over a hot stove” to get them their dinner.

And boy is that stove hot. It’s a Josper charcoal grill. It heats to 500 degrees Celsius, which sounds like strapping your steak to the outside of a space shuttle and attempting to re-enter earth’s atmosphere. But I wonder do the words “fire, air, charcoal” on the menu sound profound or do they sound like a heavily marketed big expensive barbecue?

The place looks great. The polished cutlery on the tables lies snugly in a crisply starched tea towel. Side plates are flowery. Service is excellent and the meat-heavy menu has a pricey wine list on the back. This includes seven kinds of champagne, the most expensive clocking in at €275 a bottle. We order a bottle of Zagalia, a Sicilian pinot grigio (€27).

Those great starters arrive lickity-split on beautiful plates. Jeanne’s gnocchi are dense tube-shaped chunks of potato pasta drenched in a creamy confit tomato sauce with artichokes, tiny chunks of great mozzarella and warm wilted spinach leaves draped over it. It’s got a dusting of grated Parmesan and looks and tastes wonderful. I get a generous plate of slow-roasted beetroot quarters, half of them purple the other half glamorous apricot orange. They’re sweet and slippery and a perfect contrast to a dry, salty goats’ curd, paper-thin slices of raw radish and micro leaves.

So far, so harmonious. Then the orchestra stops playing, packs up their instruments and a kazoo band arrives. My catch of the day is sole, which lives up to its name. It’s like the rubbery underside of a Converse covered in “seaweed butter”, which turns out to be a few tiny flecks of pickled-tasting green stuff. The fish doesn’t taste fresh. I flip it over at one point to see if the underside tastes better. It’s worse. There’s a lovely roasted lemon half to go with it and “sumo” chips, which raise the existential question of whether a chip can be too thick? If we had to make an emergency dash southside we could paddle-board over the Liffey on one.

Jeanne’s flat iron steak tastes smoky but instead of the well-done she asked for it’s oozing blood, which I like, but she can’t face. “It’s a bit much to set yourself up as a grill restaurant and get the grill bit wrong,” she says.

Her dessert, a Rhubarb Mess, is a very tidy line of poached champagne rhubarb, artful blobs of lemon curd and teeny meringues and cream. Mine is the real mess. It begins with a thick layer of piped cream (a shudder since my days as a waitress when I sprayed it onto overpriced desserts). Underneath there’s a mud-thick salt caramel ice cream with lumps of rubbery popcorn in every second spoonful. I fish for the promised candied peanuts but each lump turns out to be popcorn. Halfway through I give up.

It’s early days and the starters show that they’re doing something right here. But when the best dish in an expensive grill restaurant is a plate of gnocchi you have to wonder how it will all pan out. Dinner for two with a bottle of wine, sparkling water and a mint tea came to €114.80.

The Morrison Grill, Ormond Quay, Dublin 1, tel: 01-887 2400

WHAT THE NUMBERS MEAN:

Our new ratings system gives an overall verdict out of 10, reflecting not just the food but also the room, the service and the value. If a restaurant scores 7.5, I don’t think you will be disappointed. The highest I have awarded so far has been an 8. The half point deduction might mean a small wobble in a course, a lack of atmosphere, or a bill that seemed a bit steep.

4/10

THE VERDICT:A strange meal of two entirely different halves

Food provenance: Great, Iona Farm supplies the vegetables, mussels come from Kerry and Tom Lynch supplies the pork

Wheelchair access: Yes

Facilities: Large and beautiful