I THINK the greatest asset of Dublin's Hibernian Hotel is the fact that it doesn't feel a hotel. That brassy, know-all confidence which most hotels like to assail you with the moment you walk through the door - the pearly smile that says "I came in the top three of my class in reception efficiency training and make sure to get eight hours sleep every night" - is absent here.
The reception desk is almost invisible. The entrance to the dining-room is through a room with a small bar which looks completely uncommercial. Then there is the single room, ended by a small conservatory, which is the restaurant itself. Hotel? This feels more like a rather grand house: intimate and friendly.
The Hibernian is also different from most Dublin hotels in that it has always striven to have a restaurant which could - and should - have a life of its own.
In the past couple of years, it has increased this ambition greatly, as David Foley, a Kerryman, has had charge of the kitchen. He is fortunate in that the numbers he has to cook for are relatively small - the restaurant sits about 35 or so, with 50 people in an evening the most they can cater for; this allows Foley's cooking to stay clear of the shackles of "catering" into which most hotel restaurants quickly sink, and lets him show his style. Here is food with personality.
A midweek lunch showed not only the room at its best - calm, comfortable, bright, a mix of business folk, ordinary citizens and residents - but also showed the directions in which David Foley understands hotel cooking can be taken.
His menus are friendly, ringing the changes through soups, mousses, terrines, fish, fowl and pork - quenelles of smoked salmon with a celeriac and walnut salad and a chive sauce; chargrilled chicken breast with a fine ratatouille; escalope of lamb's liver with baby vegetables and two chocolate mousses with a raspberry and mint coulis. These familiar culinary elements tie in with other gestures which are designed to comfort those who have certain expectations of hotel diningrooms.
Service, from classically liveried waiters and waitresses, is fairly formal, and yet they manage relaxed chit-chat with ease. There are white tablecloths and tall-backed chairs. Main courses are accompanied by a side-plate of vegetables. A sorbet of champagne and lemon juice is served in a tall tulip glass. All of this is In The Tradition.
But then, David Foley likes to show that hotel food can have style and signature. A starter of baked avocado stuffed with blue cheese served on rocket and curly endive salad with a light tomato coulis, turned out to be wrapped in a pillow of filo pastry. What was impressive here, and provocative for the appetite, was the sharpness of the blue cheese which counterpointed the neutral flavour of the avocado. The coulis was crisp and fresh, the salad lively, and the dish successful.
A layered terrine of quail with a plum tomato and mango chutney and a raspberry vinaigrette was even better. The splendid terrine was moist, sweet, dotted with blueberries and perfectly constructed - a telling exposition of the discipline. It sat on a circle of toast, on some lettuce leaves, a touch which the dish simply didn't need. I figured the raspberry vinaigrette would be superfluous too, but it was well-balanced and gave a nice relief of flavour to the terrine. The tomato and mango chutney had some raisins in it, and the ingredients worked well together, without ever achieving any sort of mercurial synthesis.
That David Foley is always chasing after a synthesis of flavours was shown by the clever match of a casserole of fennel and smoked bacon which sat under some pan-fried filets of cod, ringed with a champagne cream sauce. The fish, fennel and bacon formed a good structure of compatible flavours, their natural sweetnesses cleverly thought through, and the sauce was light rather than rich, freckled with cut chives.
Foley has a light hand with his cooking, as this sauce showed. It is" a necessary factor when cooking for a business clientele obsessed with their weight, of course, but it is also a factor which suits his work for his natural inclination is to season lightly, and not to smother flavours.
A roulade of sea trout with a saffron mousse, creamed spinach, and a red pepper essence, which gave a cute interplay of colours, was another briskly flavoured dish in which all the individual elements were properly attended to. This is a point worth stressing: most hotel food suffers because chefs expect to cook for large numbers so there is no time for individual attention. The cooking in the Hibernian has the care of restaurant cookery: the Patrick Kavanagh Room is a restaurant which just happens to be in a hotel.
The main courses were partnered with side-plates of vegetables: green beans with bacon, steamed potatoes, a little pot ate croquette and delicious batter and deep-fried aubergine.
Desserts were perhaps the best thing of all. A perfect, individual tarte tatin with a Calvados ice cream was delightful, marred only by the fact that the ice - like the pecan nut ice-cream which accompanied a superb toffee and pistachio pudding - was a little too dense. Ices should be fresh and light, and desserts as precise and confident as these two deserved better than their chilly companions.
We drank a half bottle of Wolf Blass's chardonnay, and for the umpteenth time with this man's wines I wondered how on earth he has acquired such a stellar reputation, for this was no more than competent wine-making. Thee wine list is adequate, but could benefit from more details.
Service was excellent, and it was a fine lunch, in a fine room. Yet one senses that not only has David Foley lots more things up his sleeve, but also that his boss, David Butt, is just the man to encourage him to progress, and toe advance the cause of hotel cooking.