Restaurant Reviews

Ghan House

Classics and tricky stuff all get done just right in Ghan House, Paul Carroll's lovely restaurant with rooms in pretty Carlingford, County Louth. You can order Dover sole with butter sauce and green beans wrapped in bacon and the dish is done true and right, as if it was freshly minted. Then, with tricky stuff such as tempura of broccoli with sweet potato mash, char-grilled aubergines and chard with hazelnuts, chef Piers Stringer doesn't put a foot wrong; the tempura batter is perfect; the char-grilled aubergines as good as you can eat, the mash light and sweet, the chard robust and smartly paired with the nuts.

One classic, one zany vegetarian choice, two sure-fire hits.

Mr Stringer is talented, but very controlled in his choice of flavours; that yellow sauce draped over your pork terrine looks for all the world like it is Colman's mustard, but it turns out to be a sauce of puréed yellow peppers: smart. That fillet of sea bream is matched perfectly by a salad of chick peas with a balsamic reduction, for a dish that is both earthy and refined: smart.

If it is clever cooking, it is also very pleasing cooking, very moreish, and very provocative for the appetite thanks to being very precise. Mr Stringer's food is also at one with the tenor of this charming house: pleasing, intriguing, individualistic. The house and the cooking make for a perfect double act, which, along with its great location midway between Belfast and Dublin in this lovely village, explains Ghan House's enormous success. Ghan is a stressbuster par excellence.

Ghan House, Carlingford, Co Louth Email: ghanhouse@eircom.net Website: www.ghanhouse.com

Bond

"Keeping it Simple" could be the motto of Karl Purdy's Bond, a hot and happening room at Beresford Place in Dublin 1. The menus are simple in every way: style, content, choice, language. The room is simple; a bar, a raft of tables, some big romantic canvases, and, downstairs, there is the already famous wine shop/room, where you go to select which bottle you would like to enjoy with dinner. The sommelier, Julien le Gentil, may wear a three-piece suit, but the real tenor of the room is Karl Purdy's own simple short-sleeved shirt.

Ross Solynsky knocks out the food, and what charmingly unpretentious cooking it is; roasted Portobello mushrooms with basil pesto, wilted swiss chard and taleggio is the sort of homeboy flavours he likes, or the hit of a simple salt and pepper seafood platter, even old stagers such as French onion soup are honestly delivered, and all have an eye on flavour before any consideration of appearance.

This is, truthfully, a very simplified style of restaurant cooking, with some neat touches such as Cajun herbed potatoes with mozzarella, and some weak points, such as saucing, which could benefit from greater precision: neither the peppercorn gravy with stuffed chicken supreme or a red wine jus with fillet of beef have adequate silkiness and tactility to match the otherwise smart cooking of the main dishes.

The cheeseboard is solid French, and all in good condition, and the choice of wines is simply magical: any wine buff would cry out to be locked overnight in this room, but having to pay a flat rate of €6.50 corkage for whatever bottle you choose is the next best thing to being incarcerated. But a word, too, for the selection of waters: 8 in total are for sale, arriving from everywhere from Limerick to the Haut-Savoie. That is just the sort of thing Bond does so well: simple, and very, very clever.

Bond, 5 Beresford Place, Dublin 1 tel; (01) 855 9244 Lunch & Dinner

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