In search of a fresh city centre catch

EATING OUT:The Pembroke gets a new lease of life as Matt the Thresher seafood bar and grill – but there's plenty more work to do

I’M WITH AN OLD friend and we’re talking salad days and nostalgia. We both worked or lived in this district back in the day. I was in the old

Sunday Tribune

offices on Dublin’s Baggot Street, where a branded window blind hangs sadly in a top floor window. He remembers living on Kildare Street and tripping about town like the twenty-something bachelor he remains at heart. We both love this corner of Dublin.

We’re sitting in Matt the Thresher on Pembroke Street in Dublin’s office district, having lunch at the new seafood bar and grill. Despite the new name and enough off-white paint to smarten up a battleship, this place is still very much the old Pembroke Inn. The overwrought metal light fittings are still here. And downstairs in the ladies’ the hot taps appear to be sealed shut so you can only wash your hands with cold water. It’s a small thing, but it says a lot.

The majority of customers the day we are here are grabbing a quick bite. We arrive before the 1pm kickoff and stay after it, which is a bit like being two large rocks on the beach as the tide comes in and goes out around us.

A press release has gone out trumpeting the arrival of a seafood bar and grill in the expert hands of chef Stephen Caviston of the Glasthule seafood family. There’s a wet fish counter with whole fish and prawns on ice. I want this to be good. Dublin city centre needs a fantastic, reasonably-priced seafood restaurant. Feeding office workers oysters has to be better than offering them paninis; making for a working life less ordinary.

And the oysters are grand. Six of them shucked and served with a shallot vinegar. They’re farmed oysters from Carlingford Lough at €8 for six. “It’s not like jumping out an open window into the Atlantic,” Peter says wistfully, remembering his first oyster experience. But as oysters go they’re tasty, fresh and well served.

My crab claws are small and not very impressive for nearly €13 – eight of them around a pool of sauce that doesn’t seem to know if it wants to be a vinaigrette or a butter sauce. The brown bread is nice, fresh and properly made.

Our main courses come when they’re in the teeth of the Friday lunchtime rush and I can hear the bell ringing insistently in the kitchen as plates of food are ready to go. Maybe that’s the reason we get two plain plates of fish and nothing else for a good 10 minutes.

My hake is uninspiring. It’s got a slightly dry heat-lamp texture on the top and the flesh comes apart with a rush of liquid that isn’t appetising. It tastes like chip-shop fish with the batter peeled off. And there’s nothing to distract from it. Peter’s haddock is a little more tasty, though it too has a crisp crust on it, a sort of half-batter, half-glaze.

A waiter brings our side salads and a small bowl of spuds with apologies for their initial absence. But they are not worth waiting for. My bowl of small bitter leaves has been dressed with a too-sweet honey dressing, some untoasted sunflower seeds and leathery, semi-sundried cherry tomatoes. The bitter-sweet thing doesn’t work and the dried tomatoes are way too strong. Blitzed in a blender with some good olive oil and garlic they could have been turned into a great pesto to go with the home-made bread. Instead they’ve been wasted, like the other good ingredients in the bowl, to create a pretty but inedible salad.

The potatoes are tasty, but not outstanding and the ones at the top have no butter on them as it’s pooled in the bottom.

“You have a different relationship to food when you have no time,” Peter remarks when we are left in the now-quiet pub after the lunchers have rushed back to their desks. It’s true, especially in Dublin 2, where you want it quick, hot and edible. Can you churn out quality fish and seafood to 120 covers under those demands?

Matt the Thresher is doing bar food and, apart from the oysters, it’s nothing you won’t find elsewhere. There’s a tapas bar in the afternoons with a €20 offer for four dishes and a glass of wine or a pint. Maybe in the quietness of the afternoon the experience would have been better.

We pass on dessert and have two fairly ordinary coffees. The bill, with a shared bottle of sparkling water, comes to €59. Bearing in mind you can spend €50 on a set lunch for two in Kevin Thornton’s restaurant, where he is doing things with fish that will make you sit up and bark like a seal, this seems poor value.

My advice? A revamped restaurant should spend money on piping hot water into its women’s washroom before it spends money on a press release. Otherwise it’s business as usual, and not in a good way.

Twitter.com/catherineeats

Matt the Thresher

31-32 Lr Pembroke Street, Dublin 2,

tel: 01-6762980

Music:Pub rock

Facilities:Pub toilets with that lack of hot water in the ladies

Wheelchair access:Yes, but bathrooms downstairs

Service:Good and friendly

Food provenance: Really good. Names listed include Gubbeen cheese, Ed Hicks sausages, bread home-made by Peter Caviston in Glasthule, rock oysters from Carlingford and wild native oysters from Dingle Bay