Eating outOn a recent Saturday when we were, rather unusually, en famille in the capital, we sent our children off to eat pancakes and callously headed up to the Green to have lunch in Thornton's. It was work, I explained.
Well, it was a great meal, underlining again how Kevin Thornton is one of our great chefs, and it was somehow simpler and less fussy than some of his previous cooking. It was also - and this will come as a surprise to a lot of people - exceptionally good value. It being lunch and as we were going out to dinner later on, we had a half bottle of wine and eschewed pud in favour of Thornton's exceptional petits fours and coffee. The result - and bear in mind that the half bottle was of Meursault at €50 - was a bill of €140, including mineral water.
One of the blessings of being a restaurant critic is that some chefs cannot help showing off when you're in their establishment and, as a result, you get a series of little tastes of this and that. I suppose it's fair enough if you want to gather a representative idea of the menu but it's a bit misleading in that normal diners will usually just get the one amuse-bouche.
Well, the bouche was more than amused by a little taster of impeccable John Dory lying in a shallow pool of - here my vocabulary lets me down - a cross between a foam and a cream that was pure essence of truffle. It produced a sense of near ecstasy.
A second taster was of milk-fed Tipperary lamb. Milk-fed? I think we can take it that this lamb was very young indeed. A chunk of it, delicately pink but still cooked, that is to say not raw and cold in the middle, was presented within a circle of minute courgette rings, each smaller than a one cent coin, perched on the most divine, creamy puree of wild garlic. This, we decided, just couldn't continue . . .
And it didn't in that my actual starter of wild mushroom terrine was exquisitely assembled and as close to a work of art as grub gets, but it was dull enough in the bouche.
My wife's red snapper, on the other hand, kept up the performance not least in being cooked absolutely à point. It came with something between a foam and a puree, once again, and this time it was made from smoked peas. Smoked peas? Yeah, right. A daft thing to do with the first delicate little peas of summer. But it wasn't. It was just lovely.
Bizarre pairings like peas and smoke are part of the ambitious chef's stock in trade, and thus it was no surprise that my main course was, essentially, chicken and a prawn bisque. And it was, essentially, just superb. Somehow that bisque drew the essential flavour out of the chicken while, at the same time, combining with it to produce a third and wholly unexpected flavour.
We decided that a restaurant on St Stephen's Green that serves mallard duck must be quite brave because tanked-up diners will inevitably make loud and not very amusing remarks about local food. I suspect that the declaration of duck variety in this instance is part of Kevin Thornton's notoriously wry sense of humour.
Anyway, the important thing is that the duck sang with the flavour that only wild things can achieve. It was cooked pink but, again, not raw in the middle as so many lazy chefs are inclined to do. It sat centre stage, its richness counterpointed by pickled red cabbage and some pistachios.
We enjoyed the palate cleanser of fruit puree ice pops, served with a great flourish and a lot of dry ice, and cleared a decently sized tray of petits fours with our coffee. It was an impeccable lunch.
As to the revamp, huge enlargements of Kevin Thornton's photographs (especially one of cut truffles) are very striking, and the dining room was relatively bright and cheerful at lunchtime. On the other hand, the bar was rather gloomy. It seemed odd that the chairs were recovered but the legs remained scuffed and that some of the crockery was showing its age. But frankly we couldn't have cared less.
Thornton's, Fitzwilliam Hotel, St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, 01-4787008
WINE CHOICE:This is one of Dublin's best lists, very classic but stuffed with surprises. I'd love to drink the superb Domaine Trévallon '99 (€130) or the Château Simone Palette (€86) to name just two southern French beauties. Château Pichon-Baron '97 (€150) is drinking beautifully now, but I don't think I'd spend €950 on the very rare Spanish Pingus '95 even if I had it. Guidalberto, the second wine of Sassicaia, however, is a steal at €91. Château du Cèdre "Le Prestige" Cahors (€45) is lovely, if tannic, while Craiglee Shiraz (€83) is one of the New World's best. Gobillard 1er cru Champagne NV is easier to justify at €90 than Krug's stunning Clos du Mesnil 1988 at €787, or even Krug Grande Cuvée at €327. But then Thornton's is a very Krug kind of restaurant.