Eliza Blues on Wellington Quay was just another obscure Temple Bar restaurant until the millennium bridge was installed just in front of it. Now it has a far more interesting outlook from its wide, plate-glass windows, and if you want a nice, ordinary meal at a reasonable price and a good view thrown in, give it a try. The restaurant has been there for four or five years but it recently changed hands and is now operating as a guest house too. The name doesn't mean anything in particular. The previous owner simply borrowed it from a restaurant she had liked in Sydney. We showed up on a wet and windy Tuesday and found it pleasantly half-empty, though many of the other Temple Bar restaurants were full, particularly Elephant & Castle which practically had steam coming out the door there was so much going on inside.
The entrance to Eliza Blues is a rather exciting, curved door that shoots open at the press of a button, letting you into a porch with another door into the restaurant. This presumably keeps out the vicious gusts of wind that whistle up and down the quays.
With an entire wall of glass on one side, I was worried about being cold, but whatever is in those windows it works. Not even a hint of chill worked its way up my skirt or down the back of my neck, and though trucks were thundering by outside, we couldn't hear them. So far, so good. We were shown to a table in the window and handed hefty leatherette menus.
The tables are laid with paper napkins and smart modern cutlery with a good heft to them. The sound system is terrific, like being in a cinema, but something that sounded like an epic movie score was being played - thrilling stuff, but difficult to talk over.
The theme of Eliza Blues is all to do with rivers and boats. The walls are painted in a murky blue wash and decorated with ceramic slabs depicting ancient boats and Anna Livia, while the deep blue ceiling is covered in sails pulled taut. The menu is long and surprisingly ambitious. Later, one of the staff told me there are six chefs slaving away in the basement kitchen. It's mostly seafood priced from less than £10 to around £12.95. For main courses you choose from safe dishes such as scampi, lemon sole or pan-fried monkfish or you can be daring and order swordfish or snapper.
They also do lots of different steaks since we Irish - and probably the tourists too - must have meat. There is a good range of starters including old favourites such as deep fried mushrooms, mussels, chowder and seafood cocktail ranging in price from £3.25 to £5.50.
"Last night's leftovers," the waiter joked, lowering David's prawns in filo down to the table. That was brave, because they did look a bit like leftovers. The filo pastry was brittle and tough and so were the prawns, and there were only four of them. They were really just crispy vehicles for the nice creamy garlic sauce and barbecue sauce.
My smoked salmon was very good. It came heaped high on four slices of crumbly brown soda-bread spread thinly with cream cheese, and a well-dressed salad scattered with thinly sliced red onions. You don't get bread and butter at any stage of the meal but, we did see some very small slices of bread roll at a neighbouring table.
David's main course of Eliza's Oceanic Seafood Stew was excellent stuff: a steaming dish of chunks of fish in a light tomato sauce. Nothing too complicated, but it looked good and the fish was fresh and firm. One annoying feature, though, was the pair of empty oyster shells parked in the middle of the plate. They looked good and they bulked out the dish but there was nothing in them, which is a bit of a cheat.
Still sticking to the classics, I had ordered an 8-ounce fillet steak with pepper sauce. The grilled steak arrived on a cold plate, swamped in a red, peppery sauce that tasted like something I've had from a jar. It tasted fine, but the meat would have been fine on its own because it was so tender and well cooked.
We had some rather uninspiring veg - carrot batons and baby ears of sweetcorn chopped up into pieces. A huge dish of mashed potatoes had chopped up herbs through it but didn't taste of anything very much. It had been over-mashed so it was very starchy and inclined to stick to the roof of the mouth.
Best of all were the French fried onions on the side. I haven't had these for years, not since the days when my sister used to send me on the bus to Blackrock, at all hours of the night, to get a bag of them from one particular Chinese takeaway. These ones were totally delicious with a dry and crispy batter on the outside and sweet rings of onion inside. We weren't in the mood for a fancy demanding wine, and chose almost the first one on the list, a £13 sauvignon blanc from the Pays D'Oc. It was just as nice as the New Zealand ones I like but which generally cost far more. The dessert menu had all the usual suspects - chocolate mousse, banoffi pie, apple tart and so on. We shared a carrot cake and got a big doorstep of it with masses of frosting on top.
Decent, strong cappuccinos followed and we spent a while just looking at the people walking by. The bottom halves of the windows have wavy glass screens so you are protected a little from people staring in at your thighs, but passers-by seemed a bit startled by the bright lights shining out and down on them from the slightly higher level of the windows.
The bridge is very pretty at night with its green, pin-point lights and slender lanterns at each end and it was busy all evening with people strolling over to Temple Bar. Beyond it, you get a great view of the Morrison hotel which also looks its best at night, with its huge, potted trees swaying in the wind and its name lit up in bands of violet light around the building. Further along, Zanzibar's Moroccan lamps were twinkling away and we thought what a great town Dublin must look to tourists at night.
The bill for two, service not included came to a shade over £60.
Eliza Blues is at 23/24 Wellington Quay, Dublin 2: 01 6719114
