Francesca's: Undiscovered city centre gem

Let’s start with a promise. The only time you’ll read the word passion in this column is when it’s followed immediately by the word fruit. Can we please stop talking about having a passion for food? Instead, let’s discuss chefs who care. We imagine they’re shiny-eyed and young. They’re in their first big gig. And at the end of the night they tour the tables and feel the love in return for their hearts on a plate.

You don’t expect to find them doing a 15-year stint as a hotel chef. But when you do it’s a little like pulling out a beautiful forgotten garment from the back of the wardrobe.

A hotel restaurant is an old-fashioned idea. Even the name of this one, Francesca’s, in Brooks Hotel in Dublin’s Drury Street has a peach satin napkin nostalgia feel to it. In this buzzing dining district it’s the last place many people would think of having dinner.

The bar has, in the past, struck several patrons of my acquaintance as the perfect spot for an affair. “Are you a resident?” I’m asked when I book a table. “What’s your room number?” the barman asks my friend Paul when he orders a cocktail in the bar before dinner and sends a gleeful “Julia Roberts eat your heart out,” text to his sugar-mammy.

A hint that Brooks might have an edge was when recent celebrity guest Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall had a tour of the kitchen and a demo of how to turf-smoke a lamb steak. They gave him a souvenir sod of turf so he could try it at home.

Patrick McLarnon has been the chef in Brooks for 15 years. He's a blogger ( patcooksirish.blogspot.com), forager and gardener. He once tried to put a pumpkin patch on a flat-roofed part of the hotel. It meant clambering through a bedroom window to tend it. I know this because I rang him the morning after dinner. But first back to the night before.

The dining room is large, modern and comfortable, with banquette seating and angled mirrors. Our veteran waiter flaps the sharply-ironed linen napkins out with a snap and drops them into our laps after we sit down. “Now this is a hot plate,” he warns later as he holds it just out of arm’s reach, as if not sure whether I’m to be trusted.

There are four lovely things on this piping hot plate: a disk of feather soft Fivemiletown goat’s cheese, pureed sweet potato, a small tangle of dressed leaves and some toasted pumpkin seeds. I’d like a little something else crunchy to put all these lusciously soft things on, so I eye Paul’s curly melba toasts. He’s having the duck liver pate. I’ll hazard a guess it’s onions and livers fried on a pan, drizzled with brandy and cream, blended to a moussy smoothness and topped with clarified butter.

It tastes quietly brilliant and the second best thing is its arrival at room temperature, not fridge-chilly. Two generous glasses (€7.95) of the La Vendimia Rioja-Tempranillo-Grenache blend go down nicely.

Main courses are just as sure-footed, guinea fowl stuffed with brandy-sozzled prunes and a celeriac puree is judged “just right”. My two rectangles of crisply finished pork belly sit on top of kale and bacon strips stirred into buttery mashed potato. The pork is a layer cake of crisp crackling, fat, white pale meat darkening to a deep brown. Every morsel is memorably good.

Desserts tend a little more towards hotel blandness. A milk chocolate mousse is like Plasticine and my blood orange steamed pudding has more than a hint of marmalade. It’s redeemed by some cardamom ice cream, though it’s a faint whisper that is nearly entirely drowned by the citrus swagger.

This is the food of a chef who cares. The keg yard has a small vegetable patch and McLarnon has a plan to grow garlic in wine crates. In elderflower season he’ll be heading to the yard of Kilmainham garda station to forage, and someone has just shared a secret Dublin samphire spot with him.

By the time we finish, the dining room is empty. There’s been just one other table all night. That’s the biggest mystery of this place. With food like this at €23 for two courses, it deserves to be thronged. Our three-course dinner for two with three glasses of wine and a mint tea came to €97.

SECOND HELPING...:

They’ve successfully tinkered with a classic in The Cracked Nut, a lovely new food market and cafe on Dublin’s Camden Street. Scones are made with a generous helping of cinnamon, and topped with cinnamon sugar. They are (they won’t thank me for this) large enough to share. The packing case shelves have a small range of food that gets you thinking about dinner while you munch. Or you can sit at a table on the footpath.

The Cracked Nut, Natural Food Market, 71 Camden St, Dublin 2, tel: 01-5375942

7.5/10

THE VERDICT: McLarnon is quietly making lovely Irish dinners with great ingredients.

Facilities: Downstairs. Nice. Hotel-y

Music: Light jazz

Food provenance: Excellent

Wheelchair access: Yes