Who would be a restaurateur in January with the whole country - bar, perhaps, the Esat shareholders - making resolutions about cutting back, going on the wagon, losing weight and generally tightening the belt until payday? But for those who have to go out, there are a few new places to try in Dublin.
Everyone is talking about Bang on Merrion Row, an offshoot of the Unicorn and run by the Stokes twins, sons of Jeff Stokes and Pia Bang. Haven't been there yet so I can't say what it's like but the verdict seems to be great atmosphere. Around the corner there's a trendy new wine bar on Ely Place, called Ely. The menu is fairly limited at the moment but you can have a plate of oysters or bangers and mash, and choose from a good, long, round-the-world wine list. Again, I haven't tried it properly, except for a coffee in the afternoon, which was very peaceful and discreet because there was no one else there.
I did go to the new Bruno's on Kildare Street, where Mitchell's cellar restaurant used to be. Bruno Berta is the savvy Frenchman who decamped from Patrick Guilbaud's some years ago to open Bruno's in Temple Bar, a smart but pricey French restaurant. An instant hit with barristers and business people, it does a brisk lunch trade and is packed at night.
With the Mitchell's premises it might be difficult to attract the crowds just yet. The old Mitchell's was one of the places to eat in Dublin in the late 1970s and 1980s, when there were very few alternatives, it must be said. It was a warm, bustling place where the dishes, and some of the waiting staff, stayed the same for years. You could get a hot, vaguely French meal and a glass of claret there, sitting cheek by jowl with a lot of people straight out of a Barbara Pym novel. Keen-faced civil servants, women in tweeds, solicitors, politicians and nice old gents with drips at the end of their noses were among the regular clientele, and not many of them will be tripping down the steps to the new establishment.
According to one of the waitresses, there's been some strong reaction from old regulars, including one very stern phone call from a man who told them that on no account were they to take the quiche off the menu. I can't remember the quiche but I can remember mounds of dreary coleslaw with everything and the sort of friendly, slapdash service you get in a seedy old club.
Bruno has a lot of class and buckets of charm (he remembers your name if you've been just once or twice) and if he spends plenty of time on the premises he will win over new and old clients. He has made a lot of changes. He swept out the sawdust and extended in every direction, including down, to make a really big restaurant that looks cosy and intimate from the front, but goes back and back with white walls and well-positioned mirrors making up for the low ceiling.
The floor is bloodcoloured linoleum, and the chairs and tables have mustard overtones. The overall effect is hip and international - you could be in a bar in Brussels or in a waiting room at Schipol airport.
In front, there's a well-lit seating area with comfy brown couches on a tiled floor. The bar was unattended when we arrived the other evening and only one table was taken. My sister, Sybil, had gamely offered her services for the evening, along with her American boyfriend, Rob who, though slim of build, loves his food. He was looking forward to trying some Irish specialities, starting with a Jameson's whiskey which arrived in a brandy snifter.
We spent ages over the menu. Some dishes such as honey-baked duck on braised lentils sounded safe and delicious, others, such as pan-fried foie gras, potatoes, apples and grapes, we weren't so sure about. There is quiche on the menu, but changed, changed utterly from the Mitchell's version. It is a red onion, ricotta and spinach quiche with parmesan dressing but no one volunteered to try it.
Rob has a routine when dining out with Sybil. He tries to anticipate what she would really like to eat, then orders it himself, knowing that whatever he gets, she'll want. Then he has to persuade her to order what he really wants. Complicated, but how nice to be at that stage, instead of the later one when all you notice is that they've got spinach in their teeth, or have eaten far too much garlic. However, when Sybil's baked goats' cheese with new potato, beetroot and cottage cheese and honey dressing wasn't to her liking he was in no hurry to swap his plate of Dublin Bay prawns in filo with mango sauce. The cheese and beetroot concoction was a bit too clever and the creamy pink and white sauce it came with looked like melted Neopolitan ice cream. The beetroot was freshly cooked, with not a hint of vinegar and a fantastically earthy taste, but it was too much with the goats' cheese.
Rob's prawns were perfectly succulent inside their armour of filo and he was wild about the mango sauce and the cherry tomatoes with caps of smoked salmon marching around the edge of the plate.
My starter was the star turn - a crostini with parma ham, artichoke and mozzarella, For a start I could eat it without making a noise like a horse eating oats because the base was, I think, brioche, instead of crusty bread.
It was soft but not flabby, with enough bite to support the cheese and parma ham. That combination was delicious but it got better when you added fragments of onion and mint scattered on the plate. The artichokes were by the by, but welcome all the same.
David missed out on the starters but arrived just as the main courses were being lowered onto the table. He missed the best part of the food, I'm afraid, because his roast loin of lamb, while good, was not terribly exciting and not terribly hot either. It looked lovely with the lamb cut in discs and arranged in a circle around a shaped potato gratin, but all that arranging takes time and in that time the food cools off. It was the same with my spinach and broccoli feuillete, which I took to be a posh version of green vegetable pie. It was, with a gorgeous buttery crust under the vegetables and a creamy Roquefort sauce binding them together, but why the cap of lacy batter spun over the top of it? It looked great but tasted soggy and again the pie had cooled down so much that after a few bites it was cold.
Rob scored with his fillet of smoked beef, oak-smoked on the premises. It was a fabulously tender chunk of meat and would have been just as nice served straight up without any reference to oak chips but we all liked the taste of the smoking all the same.
Sybil's chicken-breast on a bed of risotto had a puddle of the same rosemary jus that came with David's lamb and she could have done without it. But the chicken was good and tender and the risotto perfectly cooked.
All this was served by a very charming young Frenchman with an intriguing Franco-Hibernian accent he had picked up in Killarney.
We shared a couple of perfect creme brulees, and a hazelnut tart with a honey sauce that was quite exquisite. Next time I'll just have a starter and a dessert, and eke the meal out with the excellent made-on-the-premises bread.
The wine list isn't intimidatingly long and is mostly French. There's a good selection of house wines. Our bottle of Rioja, along with a couple of glasses of white wine, mineral water and coffees brought the bill for four to £127, including service.
Orna Mulcahy can be contacted at omulcahy@irish-times.ie
Bruno's, 21 Kildare Street, Dublin 2; tel 01 6624724
