Amy L.
Yelp
I have given this place 3 stars because it WAS really pretty inside, and the food, while rather blah, didn't give me food poisoning.
However, it was otherwise unimpressive, over-priced, and the waitstaff was kind of sketchy.
The restaurant was almost empty at 7:45 pm on a Wednesday night, rather surprising, considering the vast amount of space and how enthusiastically it'd been recommended to me by a local (I've learned not to really trust restaurant endorsements from locals, because apparently they are used to paying waaaay too much for seriously mundane cuisine). They coat-checked our coats, which was a nice touch, but left us wondering about the tipping standard for that in Ireland.
This next part bothered me a LOT: the server asked if we would prefer sparkling or still water. We asked for still, assuming he'd bring tap water, like every other restaurant or bar we'd been to in Dublin. Before we had time to protest, he'd brought expensive bottled water and poured it into our glasses. Um, that's cheesy. This isn't France. If they offer you water that doesn't come out of the tap, they should specify you'll be receiving a BOTTLE of water, not just the tap water that, like I said, generally arrives at every other restaurant (including others fancier ones in Dublin). This is a big pet peeve of mine, and felt very dishonest and shady.
The bread that was brought to the table was tasty, but tiny, and considering there were four of us, including 3 large grownup males and 1 large grownup female, it seemed painfully and embarrassingly insufficient. Luckily, they brought us more bread when we inquired.
The server kept trying to up-sell us on wine, which was annoying. Most of us had strong opinions about what we wanted to drink, yet he tried to convince us to start with a bottle of white, then go onto a bottle of red. Um, one of us had already declined wine (because he doesn't drink at all), and I only drink white. That's a LOT of wine for 2.5 people just having a casual meal on a Wednesday!!!
When that tactic didn't work with us, he then tried to start suggesting wines. Oy. Dude, seriously? Server 101: you don't suggest unless somebody asks for suggestions! Otherwise you come across as pushy, especially if you never bother to ask the all-important question of "What kind of wines do you generally like?"
They handed us menus, and we noticed quickly that some of us had one menu, others had a completely different one. We then had to sort out with the wait staff which one was the current menu, which took a while and several trips by our server to the kitchen.
I ordered the CHICKEN ROULADE with mozzarella and Irish bacon, "creamed" spinach, aubergine tempura (that's eggplant to us Americans), and potato (because what would a dish in Ireland be if it didn't somehow include a potato?!).
It arrived looking very pretty, very appealing to the eye and looked hearty in size, a pleasant surprise. The tempura'd eggplant was delicious and crispy. The "creamed" spinach was actually just whole leaves of spinach that were maybe dragged through some cream in a pan, pretty flavorless. The potatoes were nicely cooked and tender, but not flavored in any additional way, and I would up salting mine out of desperation.
The chicken roulade was tender but relatively flavorless. In fact, as I started eating it, I realized that it reminded me of the type of chicken dish you'd get at some generic banquet hall wedding in the 1980's! The sauce on the plate didn't help, either, as it kind of resembled a low-flavor ketchup.
My partner's loin of bacon with potatoes was delicious (I should've gotten that), but honestly, it was over-priced...I had a similar dish at another much less expensive restaurant that was just as tasty, perhaps moreso.
After dinner, we opted not to get dessert, as one of the members of our party was exhausted from just getting off a trans-Atlantic flight a few hours earlier. Part of me wonders if perhaps that was the course that might've really made the dinner...but I guess I'll never know, because honestly, I don't feel particularly motivated to ever go back to this restaurant. I'm giving it three stars because the food was okay and the service was at least attentive. Also, I did find the decor to be very pleasant, with a modern-yet-comfy vibe. Perhaps someone else will like this restaurant better than I did?