Delahunt, Dublin - gorgeous room, classy food

When I asked Twitter - as you do - where to eat in Dublin I was inundated with replies. There is obviously no shortage of good places to eat in the world’s favourite Irish city.

But Delahunt, recommended by my friend Trish Deseine who is currently writing a guide to Irish food, sounded particularly intriguing. A stunning interior, a sophisticated take on moder Irish food and new to the Dublin dining scene which is always a lure for us gastronomic thrillophiles.

And goodness me the building is beautiful. A former offie apparently though it looks more as is if it might have been a pharmacy with a large snug at the back that looks like the dispensary. All imported, I’m guessing, judging from the ‘before’ pictures on Lovin Dublin’s blog.

As we managed to arrive an hour early (my OH having forgotten what time he’d booked) we sat at the bar for a bit until our table became free. A good move actually as we managed to squeeze in a couple of snacks - some deep fried strips of pig’s ear with raisin mustard and curried cod croquettes with ‘taramasalata’. I put that in inverted commas because the tarama appeared to take the form of 3 black blobs and the croquettes didn’t appear to be curried come to that. Delicious though. They can certainly fry which is quite an art as any Spanish chef will tell you.

You don’t really need a starter if you’ve done the snacks but we ordered one anyway in the interests of research, obviously. Some delicately smoked salmon (smoked in house, apparently) with some insanely good dark, sweet, malty Guinness bread and a lovely fresh apple and Bellingham blue cheese salad with chicory and walnut: a well tried and tested combination but perfectly executed. I’d have gone for the tempting sounding braised oxtail with bone marrow and crispy snails if I hadn’t been having a meaty main.

Actually the mains were the highlight of the meal which is unusual. Pheasant had been rolled into a ballotine and served with *sprout shells* (a scattering of individual sprout leaves), a small slab of white pudding and homemade brown sauce. Michelin standard. My OH had a simpler but equally delicious dish of superbly fresh roast hake with crushed Jerusalem artichoke, raisin (the chef obviously likes raisins) and verjus. The accompanying champ, made with floury potatoes and topped with fine slivers of spring onion was one of the best I’ve had.

We had no room for dessert but that didn’t deter us from ordering one and were glad not to have missed a blood orange tart which had the gorgeous wobbly consistency of a creme brulée It would have been lovely with a sweet wine like a Sauternes if we’d thought to order one.

If I’m quibbling the wine list could have been better for this quality of food - both my falernia and spätburgunder tasted a little lean, in the latter case simply too young. A few natural wines wouldn't have gone amiss. And the music - an insistent drum and bass - was curiously inappropriate, better suited to one of the cheaper, more casual restaurants that line Camden street. But loud, slightly naff music seems to be a feature of the Dublin dining scene. Blame The Commitments.

Delahunt is lovely though and should definitely be on your hitlist if you’re visiting the city. Just make sure you book well in advance. It’s hawt.

Delahunt is at 39 Camden Street Lower. Tel: (01) 5984880 and is on Facebook and Twitter @delahuntcamden. Dinner for 2 cost us €123.75 ex service (£91.44 at the time of writing, relatively expensive for Dublin but worth it.)

Sea Containers at Mondrian: much more fun than it sounds

I may have been handicapped by knowing the building previously as an office block but even the name Sea Containers at Mondrian has a corporate ring that makes the heart sink.

The food though is far, far better than you’d expect from a hotel restaurant with some original and delicious dishes devised by New York chef Seamus Mullen of Tertulia who has been brought in as a consultant.

We arrived late for lunch by which time the vast dining room was half empty. This is obviously a place used for business lunches by nearby office workers (there’s a 3 course deal at £24)

Our waitress arrived to explain the ‘concept’ which was ‘sharing’ (gah!) but there were enough tempting “seasonally contemplated” dishes to make us over-order.

The first wave was in many ways the best: a cracking kale, apple and pecan salad (recipe here) which would convert any kale-loather and which we liked so much we insisted on keeping to hand for the whole meal; some delicious smoky 'charred eggplant’ with mint labneh and dates (right) and a plate of artfully draped salmon ‘crudo with fennel and dill yoghurt. By the time we’d scoffed that lot we were already full.

We’d dithered over whether to order the smoked and roasted cornfed chicken (below) on the basis that two gals didn’t need to eat a whole chicken but a charred lemon vinaigrette had sold it. We did have it with braised greens and mushrooms rather than chips or mash which made it slightly more virtuous but made more inroads on it than we’d intended. (The slightly bitter lemon vinaigrette is a winner and great with the light Morellino di Scansano we were drinking)

We were less keen on the flatbread with sobrassado, a rather ungenerous pizza with slow cooked egg yolks (bleugh) perched on top but it was the only duff dish of the meal.

We managed - God knows how - to find room for a dessert - well, rude not to really with a pear soufflé for two with an extra shot of poire william on offer. A splendidly posh fine dining pudding you wouldn’t have expected to find in a relatively casual restaurant like this.

Other plusses and minuses: a decent but quite pricey wine by the glass selection (most of the interesting ones about £10-12 a glass but well served at the right temperature in proper glasses). Slightly scatty service. A request for bread totally threw them - and when it finally arrived it looked like the toasted leftovers from breakfast. Flatbread apart, I don’t think they ‘do’ bread*. Slightly annoying background music.

By and large though Sea Containers was much better than I expected in a dramatic room with stunning views overlooking the Thames and St Paul’s. Cosy it ain’t but it’s a great place to eat if you’re staying (by no means true of all hotel restaurants), to take visitors to London, especially at night or even lunch with a greedy girlfriend … If we’d stuck to those 3 first courses and a glass of wine it would only have cost £20-odd a head.

I ate as a guest of Sea Containers at Mondrian. I’m guessing the full bill would have been more like £60 a head if you ate a normal amount of food.

Sea Containers at Mondrian is at 20 Upper Ground, London, SE1 9PD. Tel: +44 (0)20 3747 1000. It's open on a Sunday which is useful.

* Borne out by the title of Mullen’s book: Hero Food: How Cooking with Delicious Things Can Make Us Feel Better,”

Gordon Ramsay, Royal Hospital Road: is it really worth 10/10?

I don’t envy Gordon Ramsay - or rather his head chef Clare Smyth - the 10/10 rating they received in this year’s Good Food Guide. It makes people like me think ‘Ha! I wonder if they’re really worth it?’ and book to find out.

Not that I have anything against Gordon. He was of the first chefs I ever interviewed when he was a sous to Marco Pierre White and I can only admire the empire he’s built - and still building. Having spent time cooking in France he’s an accomplished classic chef, a fact recognised by Michelin which has given his Hospital Road site 3 stars since 2001. Another accolade to assess.

It took us long enough to get a booking anyway - a couple of months - so unsurprisingly the restaurant was full. It’s smaller than I remembered - still essentially the same room occupied by his predecessor Pierre Koffmann when he ran La Tante Claire.

I was greeted as if I had been there last week by the maitre’d Jean-Claude Breton who said how nice it was to see me again. Did he REALLY recognise me and if so how? I hadn't been for at least 10 years. My friend N had booked, not me. An impressive feat of memory if so.

There’s the usual ushering to table, a stool on which to put your handbag (laughable in our case as our bags were so huge they topped off so we had to keep them on the floor) and a minion to escort you to the Ladies.

We were offered a glass of champagne in a hospitable way but were both sufficiently old hands to know that means at least an extra tenner on the bill (or £14 in GR’s case) so held our fire - also resisting the offer of a white truffle pasta special. The accompanying warm gougères we were given anyway were faultless

The menus are ordered on the prix fixe model. As N wanted to compare the restaurant to Troisgros to which she had recently been she went for the £95 one while I tried out the £55 lunch. Although the three starter and main course options bizarrely included four dishes that contained ham I think I got by far the better deal.

My starter of pumpkin agnolotti with Iberico ham, sage and amaretti biscuit (above) had a gorgeous roast pumpkin 'jus' ladled over it (there were a lot of sauces being ladled) - a really terrific dish. Roast rabbit loin - also with ham and salted baked turnips was beautifully presented, if a touch salty and a fresh dessert of roast pineapple with coconut parfait, coriander rum and lime sorbet just lovely. Like an upmarket pina colada.

N was less impressed by the vast sausage-shaped (I’m chosing my words with care) beetroot which was presented at table then dismembered and served with goats curd and a kaleidoscope of colourful blobs and swirls, a rather ordinary - and small - main course of turbot with clams and a fiddly carrot ‘cake’ with mead, bee pollen and cream cheese ice-cream that had us both longing for a big vulgar slice of the real thing. You can read her trenchant reaction (with some rather good pictures) on her blog The Food Judge.

To do GR credit I certainly wasn’t short-changed on the amuses because I was having the cheapest menu. They were actually rather more exciting than N’s dishes: a deep fried chicken wing in a glass tube which billowed smoke and a fabulously sexy potato purée with smoked egg and truffles. Both would have been lovely with the champagne I suspect most there would have been drinking. There were also some pretty flashy petits fours which we were still offered despite the fact we didn’t order coffee or tea. Brownie points for that at least.

We had difficulty finding an affordable bottle from the very pricey wine list, eventually splashing out a half bottle of a lovely creamy 2010 Bernard Moreau Chassagne Montrachet (for £46) which was decanted and served at cellar temperature by the impressive young female sommelier. I topped up with a gorgeous glass of Ziereisen ‘Schulen’ spåtburgunder from Baden (£15) which proved perfect with the rabbit.

Overall though there just isn’t the wow factor you would expect from a restaurant that scores 10/10 - or from a 3 star. There aren’t enough dishes that leave you stunned with their invention and virtuosity. And no Gordon. Obviously. In fact it’s hard to see what role he plays in the restaurant. My guess he comes in for a menu tasting every so often and emails Clare with a dish he’s spotted somewhere - the talk when she got the GFG accolade was all about her not him. But a restaurant called Clare Smyth obviously wouldn’t pull in the punters the way the Ramsay brand does. Odd to say this of a Ramsay restaurant but it lacks personality.

The bill came to just over £250 for the two of us - I guess not excessive for a 3 star but we had been reasonably careful. You could easily clock up a bill twice that amount as I’m sure many people do. Worth it? Maybe if you've never been, maybe for lunch but despite the VIP treatment I'm in no hurry to go back.

Gordon Ramsay is at 68 Royal Hospital Road, London SW3 4HP. Tel: 020 7352 4441

The Colony Grill Room at the Beaumont: pure old-fashioned glamour

It has to be said that no-one knows how to do glamour like Chris Corbin and Jeremy King, the founders of the Ivy and the Caprice and, more recently, the Wolseley, the Delaunay and my current favourite, Fischer’s

And now a hotel. Not just any hotel but an incredibly grand ‘boutique’ hotel bang in the middle of Mayfair, in a discreet little side street opposite Selfridges. And, of course, a restaurant, The Colony, in which I could happily spend most of my waking hours.

That is of course rare for a hotel restaurant. Good though the cooking may be they often don’t work, housed in vast cavernous spaces which make you feel you should be somewhere much more fun. Corbin & King’s small gem of a restaurant (I expected it to be bigger) is attached to an equally elegant bar from which you can eat your heart out with envy at the lucky diners who’ve managed to score a table.

The menu is pure Corbin & King. Very retro with lots of American and mittel-European touches. I can’t remember when I last had oysters Rockefeller but they were never as good as this, nestled (gah! I never thought I’d use that word) in a velvety dark green spinach purée topped with just the right amount of crisp breadcrumbs, heated enough to warm the oysters without cooking them.

My friend Thane who was clearly born to inhabit restaurants like this had the day’s special, collar of bacon with parsley sauce, a dish that contained such a generous portion of ham she summoned extra sauce which was borne to the table in a silver jug.

My Veal Pojarski was a riff on C & K’s much loved schnitzel - more of a plump, pillowy escalope with a paprika sauce - pure comfort food. We ordered whipped potatoes which tasted as if they incorporated their body weight in butter and rosemary roasted pumpkin, possibly the only healthy thing that passed our lips the entire meal.

Puddings are wildly over the top. A wicked Bananas Foster (bananas in a caramel sauce with vanilla ice cream) and a Pistachio and Cherry Baked Alaska, flambéed at the table, with extra cherry sauce on the side before Thane even had to ask for it. There are little pads on which you can order bespoke sundaes, choosing from ice-creams, sauces and toppings which include chocolate flake and kid’s candy. C & K understand how to appeal to even their most sophisticated diners’ inner child.

The only criticism we had was of the other seafood dishes we tried. Slightly dull potted shrimps with not enough seasoning and a shrimp cocktail with what tasted like a rather gloopy sweet chilli sauce. Both overchilled. Not like C & K. They’ll probably have attended to it by the time you read this.

The wine list is intelligent too - slightly more adventurous than the duo’s other establishments with plenty available by the glass. We kicked off with Ostertag's Sylvaner and Albarino - both good with our seafood starters then chose Eben Sadie’s Sequillo Red with my veal (good with the paprika sauce) and a Moobuzz pinot noir for Thane’s bacon. We shared a glass of 2008 Valenti Bianchi Late Harvest Semillon with our puds which went better with the Bananas Foster than the baked Alaska. Neither of us cared a jot.

The whole thing quite frankly is a joy. Purringly smooth service. Lovely plates and cutlery, pretty glasses which I gather they had designed especially for the restaurant. (Of course they did.) And the loos …. ! Can’t forget the loos which are given the same minute degree of attention as the rest of the establishment. Note the handwash and the branded paper towels with The Colony printed on them. Pure class.

Book now while you can.

The Colony Grill is at 8 Balderton Street, W1K 6TF (just off Oxford Street) and is open all day from 7am. Tel: 020 7499 9499 or email info@colonygrillroom.com

We ate at the Colony as guests of the restaurant but I reckon you could get by for £40-45 a head for lunch or dinner without wine if you don’t go for the flashier seafood dishes, steaks or caviar. For what you get it’s not expensive. Rooms are another matter, alas.