I'm in two minds about Salamanca. On the one hand, the staff was amongst the friendliest that I've encountered in any Dublin restaurant in recent months and my guest and I genuinely enjoyed some of the dishes that we sampled on a recent Thursday lunchtime. On the other, the décor is tacky, the offering is more confusing than any restaurant's has a right to be in terms of cuisine and as for the pricing – well, after forensic study of both the website and the various menus and promo sheets that I managed to pick up there, I'm still at a loss.

Salamanca occupies the site that was previously home to Da Pino – an Italian joint that I never visited but that I know was popular with friends who'd drop in for a stomach-lining pizza before a night on the batter at the Front Lounge a couple of doors away. I never heard any of my women friends mention that they had eaten there. Anyway, the owners decided to change horses and reinvented Da Pino as sister establishment to their successful branch of Salamanca on Andrew Street.

I was lunching with my friend Sue James, a player in the foodie PR game, representing restaurants and food businesses in Ireland and the UK. (Not Salamanca, though – just in case anyone should question my impartiality.)

Salamanca was about half full – with a mixture of tourists, office workers in groups and a priest and a woman whom we took to be his sister having a deep and meaningful conversation about the challenges of his chosen career. Ahem.

We got the impression that a good proportion of the customers had been enticed in by the €9.95 for two courses plus tea/coffee lunch deal. But Salamanca is first and foremost a tapas restaurant – there's a plaque by the entrance that says it won the best tapas restaurant award at the In Dublin restaurant awards this year – and we thought it only fair to put the core offering through its paces. On the lunch deal you could have had – from memory – bruschetta, soup and a couple of other choices followed by lasagne, salmon, plaice and chips and maybe another three options. We saw a couple of these dishes on nearby tables and for the price they looked pretty good – we're not talking fine dining.

Outside on a board there had been an offer of seven tapas between two for €35.95, which sounded like exactly the kind of thing we were after but our waitress said that deal was only available in the evening. (There are also early birds, tapas towers and various other prix fixe offers – see what I mean about confusing?)

So, wanting to eat tapas at lunchtime we were consigned to the à la carte – a huge menu with prices ranging from €4.95 for Patatas Cubos (fried crispy cubes of potatoes) to €13.95 for fresh tuna. So it may be tapas, but not as we know it from Spain – at these prices you'd only be ordering a couple, which is against the spirit of the things, as I understand it.

After consultation with our waitress, we ordered four tapas plus a side of Pan Catalan (toasted bread with tomatoes) at €3.75. It turned out to be way too much food.

We had a portion of Paella de la Casa (€13.95) which would have made a substantial lunch for one of us – there were mussels, clams and prawns as well as chicken, chorizo and vegetables. It tasted pretty fine, not too stodgy. The Chorizo al Vino (€9.95) was good too, substantial and tasty, although the dish contained an off-putting amount of oil that required circumnavigation. I've written before about the feel-good properties of chorizo – it's a magic ingredient in my book, bringing excitement to the dullest dish. (Granted, there's nothing subtle about it.)

Next up were Gambas al Pil Pil (€11.95) – six or more big king prawns with garlic and (not enough) chilli. Plus a lot of oil. (Do you spot the common theme developing here?) Although the prawns weren't de-veined, they had been shelled from the neck down and again, they tasted good in a robust kind of a way. Our final choice was the Calamares a L'Andalusia (€10.95) – squid deep-fried in chilli batter with tartare sauce. Unfortunately, this plate had been hanging around for a while before it made it to our table and the squid was a tad cold, but we could tell that the batter had been good and crispy once upon a time, even though we detected no chilli.

We managed to finish about half the food – our bill with a single glass of wine (€6.50), a small mineral water (€2.90!) and a cappuccino (€3.20) was €63.15 before service. I don't think we got the best value out of Salamanca – if we had been there at the right time to avail of the '7 tapas between 2 for €35.95' then we might have thought that we had done better. On the day, though, we felt fleeced – knowing that we could have had better food at any one of a number of restaurants in the city for less.

eatingout@tribune.ie

Salamanca, 38-40 Parliament Street, Dublin 2. Ph: 01-6719308. Rating: 2/5

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