Eating out: At Shanahan's on the Green, middling service comes at a high price, writes Tom Doorley
Is there something morally wrong with spending more than €200 on a couple of steaks, three veg, a dessert, a bottle of wine and a couple of espressos? Oh, and a brace of beers. At first glance, it certainly seems hard to justify. But, I suppose, if the quality is the very best, the cooking is highly skilled and the service is second to none, you can make a case.
In its early days, Shanahan's on the Green delivered those prerequisites to serious spending. Okay, it was brash and over the top (and therefore perfectly in tune with the zeitgeist). But the maitre d' had come straight from Monte Carlo, and he conducted the dining room so that everything seemed to glide on gilded castors. The sommelier was a living encyclopedia of Californian wines. The waiting staff were as calmly and quietly professional as a surgical team. And the food was simple, flavoursome and detailed. When you ordered wild mushrooms, you got fresh ceps.
Shanahan's ain't what it used to be. The staff, though very pleasant, simply don't deliver the sort of service that these prices demand. The chatty women who run the downstairs bar are just a little too chatty; on occasion they sit down to continue their chat with the punters. In a restaurant with pretensions to seriousness, this is something I've never encountered before.
The hot, cheesy loaf and chilli corn muffin that precede all meals here - and that obviate any need for a starter - left plenty of crumbs on the table. Roughly two-thirds of them were swept away within a nanosecond of the main courses hitting the table. The rest dotted the tablecloth for the remainder of the meal. Would this happen at Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud? Or Thornton's? Of course not. But the bill would be similar.
The food was pleasant enough. My small fillet was conspicuously well flavoured, cooked perfectly medium rare, and was spoiled only marginally by a hideously sweet onion confit and a rather murky jus - the result, I suspect, of the secret mixture of seasonings that is used to anoint every Shanahan's steak. My companion's vast, weighty rib-eye, with the bone still in, looked terrific but didn't live up to appearances. Rather bland, we thought.
A shockingly salty and very heavily peppered round of hash browns was as unattractive as it sounds, but minced spinach in a great deal of butter and cream was, as you can imagine, pretty tasty. Wild mushrooms turned out to be shiitakes and oysters, as far as I could gather. More free range than, er, wild, then.
A hot dark-chocolate sponge pudding, of the sort that seems as common these days as creme bloody brulee, was efficiently executed but simply too sweet: no grown-up bitter twist.
If there was a sommelier in attendance, he or she didn't appear at our table, leaving our waiter to advise on wine. Which he did by suggesting a doubtless delicious Cakebread Cabernet for €120. To be fair, our €42 red was duly decanted and proper wine glasses provided.
Espressos were perfectly adequate; a second one was offered after the bill had been settled.
Astonishingly, although you can have an aperitif in the downstairs bar, and even eat there if you want to, you can't place your order for the dining room. Why the hell not, if I'm paying some of the highest prices in the country?
Irvine Welsh, writing in the Observer's Food Monthly supplement recently, nominated Shanahan's as his favourite restaurant. "The reason why Shanahan's works really well is that it doesn't try to be too fancy," he opined. It sure doesn't, except when it comes to the bill. "Shanahan's serves the best steak I've ever tasted," he said; it will "melt in your mouth and sit in your gut for three days". Well, it depends, as they say, what you're into.
The bill for our modest repast, including a couple of beers, came to €202.30 before service. Which is way too much for a patchy meal in a restaurant with almost comical delusions of grandeur.
Shanahan's on the Green, 119 St Stephen's Green, Dublin, 01-4070939
WINE CHOICE
Lengthy list with plenty of good stuff, albeit at a price. Nine by the glass, from a Bourgogne Rouge at €8 to Penfolds Thomas Hyland Chardonnay at €10. A good buy in whites is Clos de la Coulée de Serrant Savennières 1981 at €100, but Prudhon Saint-Aubin 1er Cru 2000 would be very tasty at €63. Hyped Harlan Napa Cabernet 1994 is yours for €1,500, while best-value red is probably Domaine de la Charbonnière Vacqueyras 2001 (€38). Best buy in whites is undoubtedly Doudeau-Léger Sançerre (€36). The cheapest wine is Hugel Pinot Blanc (€30). Our Warwick Estate Old Bush Vine Pinotage 1999 (€42) opened up into perfumed complexity after a few minutes in the glass.
PARADISO FOUND:
You can now buy a selection of gourmet food at Café Paradiso, the vegetarian restaurant in Cork. The new range from Denis Cotter includes flavoured oils, hot pepper jam, chocolate truffles, pistachio biscotti and lemon curd.
The chef and author recently overhauled his lunch menu. "While still recognisably in the Café Paradiso style, the new menu has more dishes and a wider range of prices. Many of the dishes are available in different portion sizes. The menu will continue to adapt to the seasons and will also offer a selection of lunch-friendly wines by the glass." Food prices range from €6 to €15. Marie-Claire Digby
SMOKIN':
One of the secrets of good smoked fish, according to Richard FitzGerald, is time. That's why West Cork Smokehouse, in Bandon, of which he is an owner, has a naturally draughted smoking kiln.
Some of his rivals need only about five hours to smoke their fish artificially, using synthetic flavours and colours. FitzGerald's kiln takes between 18 and 24 hours, however, burning oak or beech sawdust to generate the smoke. The result, he says, is optimal natural flavour.
The company sells about 14 types of seafood, including gravlax (or marinated salmon, which comes with a mustard and dill sauce) and three grades of smoked salmon, priced according to quality. "Irish people are prepared to pay a premium for quality food," says FitzGerald, who uses fish caught mainly off Cork and Connemara.
West Cork Smokehouse, which has a stall in the English Market in Cork, used to be called Shorescape Seafoods. Its new name is more indicative of what the company does. West Cork Smokehouse hopes its products will soon be available more widely. For now, you can find them in a few speciality shops in Dublin, including Passion for Food, in Dún Laoghaire, and Thyme Out, in Dalkey. West Cork Smokehouse, Bandon, Co Cork, 087-2809368. Colette Sheridan