To create a fabulous new restaurant in the basement of a cut price hotel takes some nerve, but Tom O'Connell has pulled it off with his new restaurant, O'Connells, underneath the Bewleys hotel in Ballsbridge. Don't be put off by the Bewleys connection. This has nothing to do with the cafe chain, so banish all thoughts of sticky buns and wonky cafetieres of bitter coffee and book a table now, while it's still new and very few people know it's there.
Tom O'Connell was until recently the general manager of the Berkeley Court Hotel and he is also a brother of Darina Allen. The quintessential hotel manager, he is a quiet, soberly-dressed and softly-spoken man who is all calm on the surface but obviously a dynamo underneath. It's safe to assume that he knows all about good food and how to get an efficient staff together - in this case many of them from Germany - but he has gone a lot further than that with O'Connells. It's huge, for one thing, and it's far more elegant than you expect for the setting.
The building is a forbidding redbrick pile that was built in the 1880s as a school for the orphan daughters of the Masons, to "carefully shelter (them) from the trials and temptations of life". It survived until the 1970s when the RDS bought the building and renamed it Thomas Prior House, after the very first secretary of the society, a
friend of Dean Swift. After that it housed a number of worthy institutions, including the Royal Horticultural Society, until it was snapped up for redevelopment some years ago. Now it has been extended and smartened up a lot and there's nothing cheap about the interior, apart from the rooms, which can sleep three or four and cost a flat rate of £65. That should give Jurys a fright.
The restaurant could have been a dowdy, noisy canteen in the bowels of the earth, but instead it's incredibly cool. Here you have the new boardroom chic with dark woodpanelled walls, floor to ceiling windows, quiet upholstery and crisp white table linen. There are no mad flowers - just tall arrangements of bulrushes, which is clever because they fit the look and last forever. It's toned down, but not dark, because the room wraps around a big outdoor terrace where you can also eat, under the glow of many gas-fired heaters.
We drove down into the underground car park, from where you can walk straight through to the bar, a vast velvety brown room with big clubby armchairs and the feeling of a luxury cruise liner about it. You can also get into the restaurant via a wide outdoor staircase that leads down to the outdoor terrace. This is a more theatrical way to arrive, since everyone inside can see you glide or stagger down the steps depending on how you are with heights. We were riveted by an elderly couple in semi-evening attire - he wearing a bow tie that matched her scarf - who took their time coming down, not a bit fazed that people were looking at them.
I had asked my friend Emer, who may have felt that she was getting the sticky end of the lollipop with this new Bewleys place, while other friends had been taken to more expensive joints, but she couldn't get over how smart it was and immediately decided to do something with brown in her own house.
The clientele is unusual too. Since this is effectively the dining room of the hotel there was a definite blue rinse, checkered pants element which other restaurants might turn their noses up at. Soon, though, it is likely to be overtaken by the executive lunchers and diners as a better alternative to Rolys. We were whisked off by a very efficient German man who settled us into a non-smoking table and earnestly recommended the monkfish and a light red wine to go with it. Being a churlish and suspicious one I can never take recommendations - do you remember waiting on tables and the chef saying "For God's sake push the fish, it's about to turn"? Both of us liked the sound of everything on the menu and there is a whiff of Ballymaloe about it - fish comes from Ballycotton every day, it says, and there's Shanagarry smoked salmon which, at £6.95, is the most expensive starter.
Emer began with a warm salad of lambs' kidneys at £4.75 and got a tall heap of nicely dressed lettuces with oyster mushrooms, onion jam and the softest kidneys she had ever tasted. We had both just finished reading Hannibal, which added a tiny thrill to the eating of offal. These were incredibly tender and delicious, unlike the chewy, pungent ones I had tasted in a more expensive restaurant earlier that week.
I got a small, freshly made pizza from the monster wood-burning oven that takes one whole wall in the food-serving area. It looks like something out of a Transylvanian castle, and could fit a couple of humans easily, but in fact it comes from Australia and is apparently the first in the northern hemisphere.
The pizza was incredibly thin, with a luscious topping of caramelised onions and cashel blue cheese and would almost have been enough on its own if one wanted to be restrained and frugal.
Meanwhile there was a bowl of bread standing by - just white and brown, but obviously freshly made, and it came with a small dish of perfectly fresh butter, not the scrapings of several butter dishes mixed together and chilled as you often get elsewhere.
Next, I had roast chicken from the spit. Have you noticed that roast chicken is madly fashionable at the moment? There is even a recipe for it in this month's Wallpaper, my favourite magazine, even if I don't know what they're talking about half the time. This is roast chicken as you would make it yourself, if you were a decent cook - a few slices of chicken breast, amazingly tender, in a parsley, lemon and garlic butter sauce and buttered spinach on the side. All you want really, though presumably you can ask for thighs and wings if that's what you like. Emer took the German's advice and ordered the monkfish with pepper, tomato and coriander salsa She said it was very good, though she didn't love it as much as my chicken.
Whether it went with the food or not, we had a bottle of Sacred Hill Australian chardonnay from the extensive wine list. This is a good list for those who aren't sure about wine, because there are notes to each bottle, where it's from, what it tastes like and what it's good with. The supplier is also mentioned, so if you like something a lot you can go off and order a case. The Sacred Hill came from Febvre, and was lovely and dry.
Emer is a slender creature who can eat exactly what she wants. After a short rest, she ordered a dessert of pear sable and got fine discs of shortbread layered with pears, almond cream and lashings of chocolate sauce. I had Irish farmhouse cheese, and got several slices of creamy cheese with fine, crispy home made biscuits. There was enough for two or three people and we picked at it for the rest of the evening. Slightly annoying was the fact that a cigar smoker was seated next to us, although we were in the non-smoking section, and he continued to pull on the remains of a cigar for quite a while after sitting down. I love the smell of cigars, but a more hardened non-smoker would have been calling for the manager.
The coffee is Bewleys', but finely ground and put through a massive
espresso machine. My macchiato was actually a mini-cappucino, though strictly speaking it's supposed to be an espresso with just a dash of milk. Still I had two, and they came with tiny chocolate truffles.
Our bill came to a reasonable £67, including the wine at about £21 and a large bottle of mineral water.
O'Connells Restaurant at Bewleys Aparthotel, Merrion Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4. Tel 01 6473400. Lunch and dinner seven days. Sunday Brunch.
