Haggis isn't an ideal dish for a sultry summer's day but the waitress was so enthusiastic in recommending it at Mona Lisa that we thought why not, give it a go, brief heatwave and all. We agreed to share a plate of it as a starter to what turned out to be a better-than-expected lunch. Mona Lisa used to be Chez Jules, a bistro on the corner of D'Olier Street and Poolbeg Street, in a fine, sandstone building called D'Olier Chambers.
In its day, Chez Jules was a great, highceilinged room that had once been Hewitts Travel agency - a place people went to book exciting long-haul flights and expensive cruises. One wall was decorated with the remains of a map of the world alongside a list of plats du jour painted in red. Long benches were pulled up at wooden tables laid with cheap cutlery, tumblers and carafes of water and, at night, candles stuck in wine bottles.
All very French except that it was run by a Scottish chain and still is, hence the haggis - posted over, it transpired, each week. Chez Jules was madly popular for a while because it served really cheap food, some of it quite good, to hoards of office workers by day and students and tourists by night.
You could get a pot of steamed mussels, a decent, if fatty, entrecote steak and a very generous potato gratin that was sometimes inedible if the potatoes weren't cooked through, but was often very, very good, with a crisp top and the layered potatoes beneath bathing in a light, nutmeg-flavoured cream sauce. With a basket of crusty French bread and a glass of a passable house red, you could almost imagine yourself on holiday in the Loire or somewhere.
But it didn't last. Standards lapsed, the menu was abbreviated and by the end of its life Chez Jules had lost any je ne sais quoi it had ever had and was serving up diabolical food on a lunch-for-a-fiver basis.
It finally closed and a team of Scottish builders moved in, propping the menublackboard outside with all their mobile numbers on it and a general invitation to girls to call them for a good night out.
The inside was duly transformed, from one big space into a far more fiddly, compartmentalised space with stairs going up to a raised area. That big, airy feel is lost, but to compensate the interior is now far more slick, with ochre walls, blond wood floor and chairs, and big, gilt-framed pictures of Renaissance beauties. Tall, thin vases with single gerberas standing to attention add to the packaged, trendy-apartment look.
The menu has changed radically too, although they are up to their old tricks offering any pasta, sandwich or salad for £5. The best thing it do here is avoid the cheap food and go straight for the a la carte, which is more expensive but a lot tastier. Grilled Toulouse sausage and mash (£9.95), shank of Kerry lamb with bubble and squeak (£13.95) and fillet of salmon with lime polenta (£13.95) are among the main courses. (However, on the day we visited most people seemed to be having cheap plates of pasta and steak sandwiches - a colleague described his as tasting like pure bootleather).
The haggis, first time for both of us, was not so much a revelation as a relief. For £4.95 you get a generous portion - out of its sheep's-stomach caul - banked up against a heap of turnip and potato mash, surrounded by a thin and rather good gravy. A good haggis is made up of finely-chopped liver, heart, kidneys (whatever offal is around, in other words) mixed with oatmeal, a smidgen of onion and plenty of black pepper. I couldn't say what was in this one, but it tasted excellent, like a rich, vaguely nutty shepherd's pie - and in fact a lot better than the shepherd's pie you get in most city-centre restaurants. We loved it and the waitress beamed her approval.
So far, so good - although the service was remarkably slow given that there were five staff on the floor. There was quite a wait for our main courses. Mary had opted for the pasta special and was pleased with the big white platter that arrived, bearing lots of fusilli in a creamy sauce with strangely pink chicken flecked with parsley and two slices of French bread on top for added starch.
It was a good-looking dish and fine for anyone who is hungry and has a day's hard labour ahead, but it didn't taste of anything in particular. The creamy sauce was bland, the pasta was overcooked, the chicken - and there was lots of it - made very little impression. That left a few strands of parsley to provide flavour and though they did their best, it wasn't a great dish, even for a fiver. Even the Parmesan - which comes in nice, big freshly grated flakes from a bowl that the waitress holds onto for dear life, was so tasteless I couldn't even swear it was Parmesan.
Mary's rocket and Parmesan salad, a side dish, was a woeful thing, rocket cowering in a small bowl, drenched with a heavy balsamic vinegar and weighed down with more of the Parmesan chips.
I did far better with my grilled breast of chicken with roast vegetables, at more than twice the price. The chicken was the usual uninspiring breast, tender enough but tasting of very little. The vegetables, though, were excellent - carrots sliced on the diagonal, peppers, onions, courgettes, aubergines seared, scored, and smoky tasting, though there was a bit too much balsamic dressing. You can order a main course of these on their own at £9.95.
Most of the main courses come with a choice of potato gratin, Parmesan mash, frites or salad. Sadly, the potato gratin is nothing like the Chez Jules version. We got a lumpy mashed potato covered in pale, uninteresting cheese and left under a grill for too long. Arriving in a little cast-iron pan, it looked good with its gorgeous orange brown colour, but needed to be prised out of the dish. Again, there was no actual taste to it. In fact, everything we ate, bar the haggis, was badly in need of garlic.
To finish, we shared the devilish sounding Iced Double Chocolate Terrine with Toffee Sauce. Another disappointment since the slice of terrine was white chocolate only - the dark bit having fallen off somewhere along the way. It tasted fine, so did the toffee sauce, but the vividly coloured raspberry stew that accompanied it, unannounced, was thin and downright unpleasant.
Nice cappuccinos followed, as did the bill for £33, slow service not included.
Mona Lisa Irish Bistro, 16a D'Olier Street, Dublin 2. 01-6770499
Orna Mulcahy can be contacted at omulcahy@irish-times.ie
