The Greenhouse: A timely return to star quality

Refreshing food rather than deadening decadence is the order of the day at this exciting joint Irish-Finnish venture, writes CATHERINE CLEARY

IT COULD BE the biggest bid for stardom since Mary Byrne took a deep breath and sang her first note. Welcome to The Greenhouse. This is restaurateur Eamonn O’Reilly’s new venture with Finnish chef Mickael Viljanen flown from his west Clare nook and landed bang in the middle of the big smoke, in the former Blue premises on Dawson Street.

My guess is O’Reilly and Viljanen are looking to bring a brand new Michelin star to the city. And it will be big if they pull it off. Since Oliver Dunne’s star for Bon Appetit in 2008 (the same year as the now-closed Mint) it’s been stagnation for Dublin’s Michelin restaurant scene. We’ve had four years of good news being no news as people held on grimly to their red flowers.

PR people like to talk about “eagerly anticipated” openings as if they were buses on a chilly evening. In truth, no one eagerly anticipates the opening of a new restaurant, apart from the people behind it. But Mickael Viljanen is the chef behind my dinner of the year when we ate in the lovely old dining room of Gregan’s Castle. So I’m looking forward to sitting down to his food again here in my neck of the woods.

But first the room. It’s a glass box on two sides, corporate, brown, male and vaguely hotelish. In fairness, they were never going to be able to recreate that heart-breaking Atlantic view over a rose garden in the west. Instead, they’ve dialled up the posh.

There are filmy brown net curtains between you and the Mansion House to one side, the handsome houses of Dawson St to the other. The tablecloths are blindingly white, the glasses sparkling. The chairs are teal velvet and the banquettes are comfortable enough for a three-hour sitting. If you go to the loo you’ll find your napkin refolded in a hospital-cornered crisp triangle when you return. The service is dazzling. It’s fine dining with highly-polished knobs on.

Viljanen is a big Finnish man (he could have been hewn from the gable end of a Connemara cottage). And the night I arrive he’s keeping a watchful eye on the dining room. I can hear lots of “yes chef”s coming from the kitchen.

Three courses at €56 and a five-course surprise tasting menu for €68 look to provide a good range of what’s going to emerge from the kitchen, carried carefully on large wooden trays. There are wine pairings but we’re going by the glass with a blended Languedoc white Bergerie de L’Hortus.

As the food rolls out I grow to like the room more. An amuse bouche includes a cod roe meringue with powdered bacon fat, eaten with a finger like the crumbs at the end of a Rancheros bag.

A shot of great fish soup comes served in a surgically-sliced egg shell sat in a white china egg cup whose stem is in the shape of an anatomically correct duck’s foot (or maybe it’s a goose’s foot).

A mackerel starter comes on a black plate that fades to vivid blue in the centre as if it has been glazed with ground-up mussel shells. What’s on it is equally beautiful, dots of fizzy green apple-y jelly, a perfect piece of crisp-skinned mackerel, pickled wild garlic flowers, sweetly-pickled radish slices folded into cones and a tiny long skinny cannelloni (that may well have been assembled with a syringe and tweezers) packed with eel and veal tongue. It all combines to that bitter tang, salt and sweet experience that separates this calibre of cooking from anything we could recreate at home.

Across the table the star dish of the night is Liam’s celeriac. A small wedge of this plain root vegetable has been baked in a skin of dark brown rye, turning it from a celeriac into an aubergine, creamy inside dark outside. It is exquisite, silky and smokey and surrounded with a black truffle jus and halved duck hearts, lying innocently like tossed pecans on the plate.

There’s a piece of cod with a glistening brown butter crust on the top with white asparagus shoots that look a little like severed fingers as I eat them. They have a metallic flavour and don’t work for me. The vivid green splodges of wild garlic sauce make up for them as do tasty brown shrimp. A foie gras mix of royale and frozen foie (think grown-up slush puppy) is a stunning blend of apple and umami. There’s an ox-cheek stew with a smaller piece of cod on top, and then it’s time for dessert.

Luscious pink rhubarb pieces come with a meringue foam and a doughy white chocolate ganache. A celery granita adds a delicate finish, and another texture. Two glasses of ginger and pastis lemonade are served with it, tasting nicely fresh and almost medicinal. Liam’s passionfruit sorbet has a creamy ginger sauce poured into its hot soft depths. It’s zingy and so light it almost needs to be netted down.

Coffee seems steep at €4.50, but it comes with the best petits fours you’ll get anywhere. The turf fudge has made its way from the west (actually it’s made with smoked fennel, but turf is what it tastes like). And there’s a shallot salt caramel, blood orange jelly and apple and hazelnut lollies.

It would have been a daring move to strip away the trimmings and let Mikael Viljanen’s cooking stand on its own. Imagine it in a Nama warehouse with concrete floors. Dublin’s probably not ready for that yet. There’s lots here to love. It’s refreshing food rather than deadening decadence. Even in the conservative surroundings these are still some of the freshest ideas you’ll find on a plate. Dinner for two with three glasses of wine and coffee came to €149.50.