Saturday night and jammy Leinster have scraped a less than inspiring 19-18 victory over visiting Edinburgh. Still, a win's a win and the crowds wending their way out of the RDS are oozing bonhomie as they head for the pubs of Ballsbridge for a post-match pint or three. We've managed to stay strong and – for the most part – resist the temptations of the chip vans that fan their seditious fumes in the direction of our seats, so we're hungry and in the right frame of mind to try out Roast, the new restaurant over Crowe's pub, on the strip of hostelries that encapsulates a certain cross-section of Dublin life. It's a crisp Autumn evening, but still warm enough for the pavement drinkers to be not solely smokers and, because it's almost Halloween and the punters include Edward Scissor­hands and Lady Gaga as well as a few run of the mill ghouls, the mood is genial. You could almost imagine that you were in a better place than Dublin in the dog days of 2010.

Last week I visited Locks on the canal in Portobello and admired the bravery of the new proprietors. This week, I'm full of respect for the guts of the people behind Roast.

First impressions aren't great, though. Walking into the first-floor room with its empty central floor space takes us back to arriving at a 21st birthday party where you don't know any of the other guests and nobody has started dancing yet. Roast is a restaurant in need of input from someone with an eye ? God knows there are enough unemployed architects and interior designers around at the moment that it shouldn't cost an arm and a leg. It's all cheap and nasty uncovered tables, naff light fittings and horrid ceiling tiles. But the welcome is warm enough to make us wonder if we have been rumbled (the staff are charming to the two children we have with us) and we're offered a choice of tables before being presented with a short menu that reads well, despite there being no fixed price offering.

Between the four of us we share three starters from a choice of six. They are universally disappointing. Confit of Pork Belly, Celeriac Remoulade, Red Wine Sauce (€6.50) is a huge slab of meat – more like a main course portion – that has been cooked for far too short a time. Confit implies long slow-cooking, the kind of treatment to transform this fatty cut into something unctuous and appealing. The remoulade is fine; the red wine sauce never appears. Steamed Clams and Smoked Sausage, White Wine, Shallots, Soft Herbs (€8) suffers from a complete absence of sausage and an abundance of grit in the bottom of the bowl, making the prospect of mopping up the otherwise pleasant juices a non-starter. Hash Brown, Black Pudding, Poached Hen's Egg, Cep Sauce (€7.50) is dreadful – the hash brown a soggy disc of mashed potato which reminds us of in-flight food – and the black pudding lacking flavour. The single cep is the best thing about it.

Thankfully the main courses are in a different league. There's no rabbit left, so we order venison, partridge and two different steaks. (The other options are duck confit, pan fried bream and fish and chips.)

Both the Rib Eye (9oz, €24) and Dry-aged Sirloin (10oz, also €24) are excellent. Flavoursome, tender, juicy, perfectly cooked pieces of quality meat. The béarnaise that accompanies the rib-eye is split, the chips are okay. The sirloin comes with spinach and chestnut mushrooms and the elusive red wine sauce makes an appearance. The Whole Roasted Partridge (€17) is terrific – moist (that's not easy to achieve) and accompanied by celeriac chips and more spinach and mushrooms. There's a thyme gravy which seems to resemble closely the red wine sauce and rather overpowers the flavour of the bird. Pan-fried Saddle of Venison (€24) is superb, the braised cabbage subtle. The potato gnocchi are cold and I can't discern the promised lavender in the sauce. A side of Duck Fat Roast Potatoes (€4) is not as decadent as it should be. The cutlery includes superb Arcos steak knives from Spain that make cutting the steaks and extracting every last morsel of flesh from the partridge a doddle.

With one shared pudding – a Chocolate Brownie Sundae (€6) that was sweet, gooey and perfectly acceptable without being in any way exciting, a few soft drinks, two 350ml carafes of wine (a Pinot Blanc and a Corbieres) our bill for four came to €135.95 before service. There's still some fine-tuning to be done in the kitchen – and on the décor, this hearty food demands a more robust ambience – but I hope that Roast will turn out to be a worthwhile addition to the eating possibilities of D4. If I was them, I'd introduce a fixed price menu that's available all night every night, spend a couple of grand on the interior and work on persuading the punters up the stairs.

Roast
Ballsbridge, Dublin 4.
(01) 6144727
★★★