Meal Ticket: The Winding Stair, Dublin 1

Older Dubliners will remember The Winding Stair as a coffee shop on the second floor of a bookshop named after a Yeats poem. Throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s, it was thronged with students, writers and Ireland’s bohemians who drank cheap tea and clutched dog-eared poetry books. Elaine Murphy took over the upstairs space in 2006 and opened a sophisticated but unfussy dining room serving the best of seasonal, Irish ingredients.

In my eating experience, The Winding Stair lost its way temporarily after half-a-decade as one of the best restaurants in the city. I visited twice in 2012 to find the staff frazzled and the menu a bit tired. Had the rest of the restaurant scene caught up and overtaken The Winding Stair or had the team taken too many knocks during the height of the recession?

A recent return visit , however, found everything to be back on form. The staff were informative, fast and happy. As always, every dish was proudly built around at least one, sometimes two or three, special Irish ingredient; like the potted Dingle Bay crab that simply showed off the Kerry crustacean, or the pickled pear salad paired with shaved Killeen’s goat cheese and drizzles of High Bank Farm syrup, or the Irish cheese board for dessert. It remains a great place to bring visitors from overseas and locals alike who want to travel the country through their taste buds.

In the last two years, Murphy and her team have been busy opening The Woollen Mills around the corner and, just last month, The Washerwoman in Glasnevin. But it appears that they haven’t forgotten about The Winding Stair; perhaps these new openings have even helped breathe new life into their original dining room over-looking The Liffey. Check out their great value posh lunch where you can get three courses and a glass of the house white or red for €29.95.