I WANT TO thank all of you who supported The Irish Times Lunch Times promotion a few weeks ago. It booked out very quickly and seems to have given a lot of pleasure to a lot of people. It has also raised more than €16,000 for the Hospice Foundation. I’m hoping that we can do it again later in the year, but in the meantime, watch out for Dinner Times which will involve restaurants outside Dublin.
I’m not a great reader of restaurant reviews. This is mainly because I want to make up my own mind, but also because some of them tell me much more than I want to know. “Sinead is wheat intolerant and allergic to shellfish, so starters were a problem. But I can never resist prawns.” That sort of thing.
So apologies for the confessional tone. The thing is, I couldn’t get a booking for the very good value lunch at One Pico. This is a very good sign. When a Dublin restaurant is busy, it generally means that a good job is being done. To borrow a phrase from the late Mickser Hand, we’re not really a bunch of muck savages at all.
Anyway, I ended up having dinner with friends at One Pico, just for fun and off duty. So this account is, if you like, Impressionist rather than pre-Raphaelite in terms of detail.
The starter to which virtually all of us were drawn, as to a magnet, involved a cylindrical tower of tender duck meat, some very pleasant black pudding and a poached egg bathed in a mustardy hollandaise. It may have looked cheffy, but it worked. In fact, it was a clever combination that delivered more than the sum of its parts.
Which is more than can be said for a bacon and cabbage terrine, which, bizarrely, struck me as being (a) rather bland despite the pickled vegetables and grainy mustard mayonnaise, and (b) just a bit too bistroesque for the à la carte dinner menu. Had it strayed over from the lunch specials?
The dish, which the menu described as “Butter Roasted Monkfish With Spices, Caramelised Duck, Parsnip Fondants, Puy Lentils Lime”, was remarkable in that the impeccably cooked monkfish more than survived the experience. (The deep-fried star anise, odd as it may seem, was quite a good idea). But surely less is more these days. You know, faites simple and all that? If Eamonn O’Reilly, the chef, keeps this up for long enough, we’ll be going to One Pico for the kind of nostalgic fix that is currently provided by the Lord Edward in terms of the 1980s.
Steak, in the form of rib on the bone, was Kettyle beef from Co Fermanagh (which I first tasted, I think, in The River Cafe in London) and had exceptional flavour, being aged for 28 days. To put this in context, you are lucky to find beef that is aged at all these days. A fortnight is generally as good as it gets. It came with triple-cooked chips and Béarnaise sauce and a few cheffy flourishes.
So, impressions? I think the general look of the place would be updated were it not for the times in which we live. Eamonn O’Reilly, let there be no doubt, surely can cook, and the raw materials here are clearly first-rate. But a distracting fussiness keeps creeping in. I’d love to see his food becoming more stripped-down and pure, to have just one or two flourishes or twists. Instead of half a dozen on the same plate.
However, there is no arguing about the value. The set four-course dinner is €45, the early bird dinner is €25 from Monday to Wednesday, and lunch is €19.95. And the service is impeccable. tdoorley@irishtimes.com
THE SMART MONEY
When I eventually get there for lunch I’ll have the crab risotto, followed by the pheasant with chestnut and bacon stuffing. With a glass of house wine and a coffee the bill will come to just over €30.
WINE CHOICE
Lots of restaurants are now very much in tune with the times as far as food is concerned, but what about the wine list? Overall, there’s not much sign of fresh thinking. The cheapest wines at One Pico are €26: tart and crisp Félines Jourdan Picpoul de Pinet and ripe Château La Baume, both from southern France. I love the intensity of Château Ollieux-Romanis Cuvée Prestige (€37), one of the great Corbières, but it’s a bit steeply priced here. Josée Pariente Rueda is a deliciously crisp, Spanish white, but at €39! Charpentier Champagne is lovely and a great favourite of mine, but at €99 for the NV? That would leave a rather bitter taste.