Although the briefest glance at the menu of Lloyds Brasserie will tell you it is a Conrad Gallagher restaurant replete with Gallagher's culinary signatures (polenta tart with goat's cheese and aubergine caviar; deep fried fishcake with ketaifi; baked chicken with grilled Mediterranean vegetables), the interior style of the new brasserie has a radically different style from the baroque intensity of Peacock Alley, Gallagher's South William Street restaurant.
Lloyds Brasserie is all sharp, sweet greens, serene royal blues, soft whites and halogen lights, the sort of meld of vivid, relishable colours we associate with a designer such as Tricia Guild. It is quite lovely, and manages to transform a room which, you have to remind yourself, is actually a basement. Situated across the road from the Dail and a few steps from Merrion Row, the room is cool, modern and unadorned: no tablecloths on the marble-topped tables, just a smattering of paintings on the walls, a minimum of table cutlery and ornamentation.
If Conrad Gallagher has chosen a completely different style for the room, his menu can be described as a series of polished key notes brought over from Peacock Alley. The dishes have been simplified, somewhat clarified, but they continue to bear his trademark of full-on flavour.
We were offered an amuse bouche of a coffee cup of clam and black bean broth, which was pleasant but somewhat missed the point of an amuse, which is merely to titillate the appetite. Enjoyable as this one was, it was simply too rich in flavour to do that. The selection of breads succeeded much better, especially terrific little stromboli rolls, the fat cigars of dough encasing a filling of roasted sweet peppers that was just knockout.
Gallagher's tendency to over-elaborate can make his dishes handsome, but somewhat illogical. The polenta tart, for example, has goat's cheese and an aubergine caviar, but even so it wears a pill-box hat of frisee lettuce, dressed with a Caesar dressing, an affectation which distracts from the fine tart. Where the new-found simplicity is shown at its most effective is with a dish of spaghetti with red onions and a gorgonzola cream, with unpeeled cloves of roasted garlic scattered around the plate. The flavours were pristine and glowing, the dish wholly successful.
A risotto of parsnip with chorizo, chilli jam and gazpacho sauce was less successful, the rice having given up any distinctive flavours, and the combination of the chilli jam and a large coin of chorizo simply piled too may torchy flavours into the mix.
There are eight main courses and the same number of starters, on a large, single-page menu which is expertly designed and includes a choice wine list. From the main courses we chose char-grilled sirloin with sauce bearnaise, sweet potatoes and onion marmalade, aubergine and tomato sausage with herb risotto, and seared tuna.
The steak is packed with flavours that combine to assault every sense. Each detail here was just right and the flavours collaborated perfectly, and it is nice to see Gallagher cook something so simple and modest. Not only is it a classic dish, with the odd little twist, but it is also effectively flat on the plate! The aubergine and tomato sausage is another dish of simple flavours, the slices of vegetable wrapped into a sausage shape, the slight oiliness of the aubergine offset by the risotto, and again it was wholly successful
The tuna is more typical of the haute cuisine we associate with Peacock Alley, spiralling high into the air on top of a necklace of shiitake and beansprouts and greens before being topped off with a teddy-boy slick of guacamole. The fish was just so, the vegetables flavourful, but a black bean salsa trickled around the plate was just viciously salty and had no true salsa nature.
The cooking in Lloyds works best when it ????????evidenced evidenced by the spaghetti and the sirloin, by a delicious bowl of chips with garlic aioli, and by the desserts. Key Lime pie with ice cream was knockout, the texture nervously wobbly and lovely, and chocolate brownie cake was a classic delivered according to the book. Time should allow the unnecessary elements to be weeded from the dishes at Lloyds, but the rest of the venture is already assured despite its youth. Service is good, the wine list excellent (try the Casablanca Sauvignon Blanc, a brilliant white wine from Chile), and the room a place you want to linger in. It has a true brasserie feel, and a little more experience will burnish it like brass.
Lloyds Brasserie, 20 Merrion Street Upper, Dublin 2 tel: 01-6627240. Open seven days. Morning coffee and afternoon tea, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; Lloyds bar menu is available from 2 p.m. to 2 a.m. Starters are priced at £4-£7, main courses £10-£15, desserts and side orders about £3-£4.