It sometimes seems as if Fallon & Byrne has been here with us forever, furnishing the kinds of fancy-ass foodstuffs to a segment of the citizenry that defines itself by their discernment in such things. Sure, you could feed yourself from the shelves of the supermarket down the street, but that’s mere subsistence. When you fill your basket at a food hall no less you know you’re really living. It opened in 2006 in the old Exchequer St telephone exchange building as ‘Ireland’s first food hall, restaurant and wine bar’ and we duly lined up to exchange currency for good taste. I also recall some derision from some quarters that was to be anticipated – one man’s mortadella is straight-up baloney to another.
There were of course other places to find the good stuff in town pre-F&B if you knew where to find them – Magill’s on Clarendon St comes to mind. It was a faintly forbidding delicatessen where Uncle Monty types would grouse about the slim pickings of the season while purchasing a gouts-worth of browning Stilton. This was a different proposition though, where earnest young folks were eager to assist in your difficult cheese choices and blow your mind with the idea of membrillo. I know that the staff were trained on Zingerman’s Guide to Good Eating back in the day and that text remains one of the best primers you can find. Olive oil, cheese, bread, it generously opens up things that can seem closed off. There’s a copy here looking at me.
Nevertheless, within a couple of years Fallon & Byrne had become the go-to spot for ruinously expensive smoked fish (hi Frank, Sally), exotic crisps and things that were luxe before being stuffed with truffles. I struck up a relationship with the affable antipodean butcher at their excellent counter who would age a four-rib joint of beef for me in advance of New Year’s each year. I knew that something had to give when I took to visiting the joint (not the place) regularly ‘to see how he (the meat) was doing’. Others went further still, choosing to celebrate their nuptials in the grand top floor room, whether for the proximity to the loaves and fishes or the handiness of the city-centre location. I didn’t consider it a venue when I got hitched but I could be persuaded to renew my vows in the Astor Place Wegmans. You get the picture, it was and is a nice place to procure nice things. So what about the restaurant part?
The dining room above the food hall is for me one of the most attractive in the city, evoking not so much Paris as New-Yorkian Paris. The distressed mirrors, crimson banquettes and zinc bar all suggest pre-opening ‘fact-finding’ trips to some of Keith McNally’s franc-simile places in Manhattan. Fine. They should have borrowed from the greatest menu hits of his brasseries (a la Balthazar, Pastis, Odeon etc) while they were at it. As lovely as it is, it’s still a place where I’ve almost enjoyed more forgettable meals than I care to remember. Hugh Higgins (Luna, Forrest Ave, Allta) took a position as a development chef a couple of years back and I’m not sure that he’s still in that (generally consultative role) but the food I found on a recent early evening was not the kind of stuff that I associate with his name. This was timorous cooking and a staid menu.
I’m told that this menu may have already changed so I won’t dwell, but a Chicken & Foie Gras Terrine seemed oddly tasteless and a Vadouvan Potato Velouté needed a lot more of that spice to stop it from becoming a bowl of unrelenting beige. Roast Chicken with a pleasingly 70s Sauce Robert was perfectly fine. A very well timed tranche of Cod with potato and fennel was better than that. You could have a Rib-Eye if you liked and you probably should. It would suit the room.
There’s nothing wrong with this food but there’s nothing remotely special about it either. It feels like place-holder stuff, standing in until the thing itself. Maybe that’s the new menu but I somehow doubt it. That bar would be a swell place to perch over a burger and a martini. Or another drink that has not been ruined by the fucking internet. I guess you probably didn’t go to culinary school to send out burgers.
On the very next night we descend to the Wine Cellar on an evening when most people were seeking out the very last slivers of sunlight to hold pints in. It was that week. The place is packed – Tuesday night packed. The €1 corkage offer might be a consideration. There was, in my mind a lot more wine in the wine cellar. The shelves seem to have receded to a small grouping next to the kitchen’s pass. The line ‘Wine is kind of our thing’ is spelled out on a mirror opposite. Maybe it used to say ‘Wine is our kind of thing’. These (apparently seasoned) cellar-dwellers seem to be doing it right by not over-thinking it. Gather a few folks around a table, get some charcuterie, split a few (perfectly good) Neapolitan pies and sluice back a couple of glasses of Chianti. Va bene.
I might have ordered the Wild Garlic Conchiglie were it not for the fact that we gathered a quantity of the stuff last week in the Phoenix Park and I’ve been hurling pungent handfuls of it at anything destined for my mouth ever since. I suspect that the dog refused her dinner the other day because of the stank of it on my hands. She’s perfectly happy to eat other weeds. The Mediterranean fish stew is nothing of the sort, in that it’s a bowl of soup featuring un-Mediterranean fish. You won’t mistake it for Bouillabaisse or Bourride. It was the kind of thing that you might enjoy if you didn’t know how much better it could be. This of course is true of everything. It looked right, fish stock had been involved, but it just lacked depth and power, as if engineered to be inoffensive. I’ve said enough about fish soup. Also – too much salmon, it has no business being in this bowl. I’m not looking for rascasse but surely you could stretch to a few morsels of monk? A handful of clams? Whatever. You could eat it and get on with your life.
A very rustic dish of Coppa (braised pork neck) eats very well indeed. The pork is yielding in a moreish marsala sauce full of mushrooms and sits atop a mountain of polenta. The cornmeal is pale and fluffy and tastes of itself. As it should. I tend to overindulge mine at home with butter and grana. This eats like the grits that you’d find under shrimp if you were to order that in Alabama. Maybe try the dish somewhere else though – I’m told that they’re currently pushing legislation through that could see the death penalty for those who believe in the periodic table. The chair will presumably be powered by the wrath of God. We enjoy a Tuscan rosato (Monteraponi 2023) that was fresh and bursting with raspberries and violets. At €32 it’s worth every cent. Service is loose and capable.
Aspirationally epicurean Dubliners owe a debt of gratitude to founders Paul Byrne and Fiona McHugh (whose sad and untimely passing was recently reported) for their genuine contribution to the food scene of the city by giving us our own little Dean & DeLuca. Current ownership would do well to look to their ambition and build a food programme that lives up to that dining room and to their vision. The ingredients are right there folks.
Words: Conor Stevens
Dining Room/Wine Cellar
11-17 Exchequer St,
Dublin 2
