You know a neighbourhood has become trendy when every second window has wooden venetian blinds instead of net curtains, and the front doors are painted various shades of grey with brushed steel letter boxes and the odd minimalist door handle that looks as though it came off a fridge. Welcome to Christchurch, an area that has been well and truly gentrified by lucky sods who bought terraced redbrick houses here for 40, 50, 60 or 70 grand in the early 1990s and lots of late arrivals who have paid considerably more. The new residents are obviously a hard working bunch because at lunchtime the network of streets between Patrick Street and Francis Street is amazingly quiet.
Where women would once have washed down their lobbies, or bustled to and from the Iveagh market, now the front doors are firmly closed and the streets are empty. Walking through on a rain-threatening day last week there was something lovely about it all the same. It's clean and smart and at lunchtime you can hear the children playing in the yard of St Francis's Boys School nearby. Francis Street had all the air of having come alive after a long, dead winter and there was a buzz on the street that must have had something to do with St Patrick's Day, and all those American tourists, being around the corner. Rickety garden furniture, old brass beds and fireplaces were stacked up outside shops and there was a steady stream of people coming and going from the Silken Thomas pub, some of them clutching hot whiskeys.
I was heading for the Old Dublin, and a really old Dublin restaurant it is, so much so that people are inclined to say: "Is it still there, I haven't been for years". It has been there for 20 years or so and at its height in the 1980s it was a favourite spot for the Fianna Fail top brass, who would congregate behind various screens to discuss business and perhaps exchange brown envelopes.
That element has dispersed but the place goes on much as it used to, serving an unusual mix of Irish, Russian and Scandinavian food that must have seemed like the last word in sophistication in the old days. It might sound old-hat now but chef/owner Eamonn Walsh isn't standing still. He runs the Grey Door catering unit from the back of the building and he's about to open a cafe called The Silk Road in the new Chester Beatty Library in Dublin Castle. Unusually for a restaurateur these days, he owns his premises - and with apartments being built all around him, and parking spaces in them costing up to £35,000 each, he's bound to be considering some form of development above and below the Old Dublin. From the outside, it looks classy but a bit dowdy, and the dull-green front could do with freshening up. You have to ring the door to get in and inside it's like a private house with a narrow hall, stairs rising up on one side, and the floorboards creaking nicely. There are dining rooms to left and right, and lunch is confined to the righthand side. It's a cosy sort of room, with burgundy-coloured walls at one end, rich yellow at the other, old prints and paintings on the walls, fussy curtains, and those wooden slatted blinds again.
There's a huge marble fireplace at one end but it's not lit, which is just as well as one or two tables are virtually in the hearth.
This was my second lunch there in as many weeks. The first was with a colleague who loved the food, but found the tables far too close together for comfort, or at least for the sort of deep-throat lunches he has with business contacts. We could hear virtually everything being discussed at the tables on either side of us. The second time I was meeting my friend Emer and an old colleague of hers, Aidan O'Hanlon, a former director of Bord Failte. In their former lives the run-up to St Patrick's day was a time they dreaded. The country would be thronged with foreign big wigs and every second phone call was from a journalist wanting to know the spelling of "Eireann go Bragh". (I don't know how to spell it either!)
Lunch has to be one of the best-value meals in town - three courses cost £13.50 and they are hearty courses at that. The set menu has five starters and main courses and most but not all of the menu changes every week. First time around we were disappointed that there were no Russian dishes on the set menu. "You only get those in the evening," the waitress told us. I had been looking forward to blinis and caviar, herrings even, but the daytime menu is straightforward stuff - steak, duck, monkfish, rack of lamb. Second time out, though, there at the top of the starters was Forsmak, which sounded thrillingly Scandinavian but turned out to be innocent, nursery food. It was a deconstructed shepherd's pie with lamb minced almost to a puree, mashed potatoes also in puree form, tiny chopped-up gherkin and beetroot at either end. Barry, the first day, and Emer, this time, liked their filo parcel starters, a thin envelope of filo sitting on a bed of red onion confit. Aidan's cream of asparagus soup was deemed very good, while a generous and brilliantly red and white tomato and mozzarella salad was enjoyed by Emer's other friend at the table, Olivia.
The bread both times was excellent, particularly the tiny brown scones that are as sweet and light as cake inside.
My first main course of crispy duck was just delicious - a really generous portion of duck - very tender, moist and flavourful, the best duck I've had in ages. It was incredibly plump and came with a delicious, creamy champ and gravy. It was so good that I was looking forward to having it again, but things are never the same twice and duck number two was a good deal tougher. The others all had fish, either monkfish or turbot, in light creamy sauces with diligently chopped up vegetables as garnish. Vegetables on the side were particularly good. Instead of the usual limp arrangement of broccoli and mange tout we got caramelised carrots, small braised potatoes and asparagus.
For dessert, French apple tarte was a big success, but best of all, I thought, was my cheese plate - a selection of five or six ripe farmhouse cheeses with lots of crackers and nicely curled up strips of celery.
Our waitress the first time around was a bit of a killjoy and her attitude from 2.30 p.m. onwards was very much you've-enjoyed-yourself-now-so-go-on-home. She tried to take the cheese plate back several times, and finally brought things to a close by removing Barry's coffee cup. The second time we ate there we were the last to leave at just after 3.30 p.m. but this time the atmosphere was a good deal more relaxed, maybe because Aidan is a regular from the old days and no one would dream of hurrying him. Emer was our host that day but previously the bill for two, including a deliciously crisp but dreadfully expensive bottle of Chablis, mineral water and coffee, came to a very reasonable £54.
The Old Dublin, 90/91 Francis Street, Dublin 8, 01 4542028
