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On the plus side, it's easy to get to. Roly Saul The Restaurant is right beside the taxi rank, there's plenty of parking and there are Luas and bus stops within easy reach. RSTR occupies the old Dundrum Mill House, which has been given the Celtic tiger architectural cliché treatment and had a glass box stuck on its side. There's a terrace out the back for when the weather permits. It didn't on the night of our visit and we were shown to a table in the very corner of the glass box on the first floor.
"I feel," said Sonia, "as if I'm in one of those corporate boxes at Wembley stadium and should be looking out at a football match." Instead, there was a magnificent tree (a copper beech, perhaps?) to admire. Truth be told, the table would not have been suitable for anyone suffering from vertigo.
The glass box makes for a light, bright room (the other, larger first-floor dining area was not in use on the night that we were there) but the décor rather lets it down – dark maroon carpet, dull prints, cheap-looking tables and stripy chairs that look as if they may have been recycled from Roly's former Dun Laoghaire outpost lend an old-fashioned air. An extravagant frosted feather-light fitting over the staircase seems somewhat out of place. In fact, the look is reminiscent more of a hotel dining area than a sophisticated restaurant.
RSTR has an early bird offer (two courses for €24 and three for €29) but unfortunately this finishes at 6.45pm and we were too late to avail of it. On Monday and Tuesday evenings, a three-course dinner for two with a bottle of house wine costs €70. Many other restaurants have extended these kinds of offers so that they are available all evening, and every night of the week. I think RSTR would be busier if it did the same.
For early June, we felt that the menu was not sufficiently seasonal. We weren't told what the soup of the day was (and didn't realise this until later) so perhaps that was very summery. The starters could all have come from a midwinter menu: goat's cheese salad; endive salad with Fourme d'Ambert, pear and walnuts; Toulouse sausage with coco beans; and chicken, bacon and pistachio terrine. We opted instead for a seafood chowder with chorizo (€7.50) that was well-flavoured and full of interesting morsels (we found squid, mussels, salmon, white fish and potatoes – there may have been others). It hadn't been thickened with flour and was all the better for it. Sesame ginger crab cake with wasabi aioli, carrot and beetroot namasu (at €10.50, the most expensive of the starters and no, I didn't know what namasu was either but can reveal that it is thinly sliced raw vegetables marinated in rice vinegar) was very good, the ginger to the fore. This was a substantial portion, and the combinations worked well together.
For mains, pan-fried fillet of North Atlantic halibut with pomme purée, puy lentils, chorizo and shellfish butter (€24) for Sonia and char-grilled aged Limousine (sic) beef, 12oz rib eye, bearnaise sauce, watercress and chips for me. The shellfish butter atop the fish came in a big slab – there was really too much of it and as the fish was moist and perfectly cooked we felt it to be over the top. Pomme purée (I think of Marco Pierre White and Hell's Kitchen every time I see those words) was a big mound of mash, and alongside the lentils in a rich gravy, seemed just too much for a summer dish. The steak was served on the bone, and cooked rather more than the rare I had ordered, but fine meat nonetheless. The portion of chips was monumental – thin and rather anaemic, they were on the leathery side. The bearnaise was fine.
We shared a cappuccino crème brulée, vanilla ice-cream, homemade cookies (€8) that came in a squat ramekin rather than the wide shallow dish that ensures maximum crunchy surface area. It was grand, not something, said Sonia, that you'd get up in the night for. We asked for the bill at 10 to 11 because we were the last people in the place (it was a Wednesday night) and the waiter made it clear that it would be great if we headed home. With two bottles and one glass of a good and well-priced Fumes Blanc Vin de Pays d'Or, 2008, at €21 a bottle and a glass of Valpolicello Ripasso to accompany the steak, our bill came to €134.95 before service.
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