Lovely room, great service, pity about the prices. Tom Doorley visits Locks on the Grand Canal
I think it was Paul McGuinness who once commented that it's possible to live happily in Ireland only if you make regular trips by way of the airport. Otherwise you may start to believe that what happens here is normal, including the high cost of eating out.
A line in a Daily Telegraph review caught my eye recently. It dealt with a Michelin-starred Marco Pierre White establishment in Berkshire (the English equivalent of Co Kildare, only posher and with proper roads). The critic was appalled that desserts cost £6.95. Let me see. That's just over €10. After our two-course set lunch, we were not tempted by the desserts at Locks, not even by the French apple tart, and particularly not by the €11 price tag. Yes, €11, in Portobello, no Michelin star. Makes you think.
Locks dates from a far-off era when only a very few consenting adults ate out. In its early days, its customers might have been paying 20 per cent interest on their bank loans. We forget what a different world it was in the 1980s.The restaurant has retained a lot of its original clientele - well heeled and d'un certain age, conservative, loyal. And the lovely diningroom by the Grand Canal is just the same as ever, as is the quiet, traditional, true Dub service.
Locks comes into its own on Fridays and Saturdays, so it may not have been a good idea to go for lunch on a Monday, especially if we had wanted a bit of buzz. We were the only customers.The bill came to more than €100. You can eat better for less - slightly less - in several places around town. Chapter One and One Pico both spring to mind.
A wild-mushroom risotto, to be sure, tasted of real mushrooms, but the point of a risotto lies in its texture, which should be somewhere between liquid and solid. Locks's version would get a frosty reception in Italy; there was no velvet sensation, the grains of rice seeming to repel each other. They kept their knees together, so to speak, rather than engaging in the sort of orgy that makes risotto . . . well, risotto.
Double-baked goats' cheese souffle was a tasty little starter. There were two of them, crisp outside and very goaty and moist inside, served with a well-dressed little salad. Very simple, very pleasant.
Cod wrapped in Parma ham was unpleasant. I won't dwell on the details, but the key faults were that the salty ham obliterated any flavour in the cod and that the cod was underdone. It also looked deeply unattractive, coming in a shade of pink more appropriate to an elderly hot water bottle. Gressingham duck breast, however, was pretty good. It was served moistly pink, devoid of skin, but tasting intensely ducky, on a bed of moist but chewy lentils. Good bistro grub, really.
We ordered two double espressos. Espressos are meant to be very short, barely covering the bottom of the little cup. A double espresso means twice that, not a cup of coffee. We got deep cups of pretty poor coffee and some pleasant petit fours. The bill, including our bottle of German wine, came to €106.20.
Locks, 1 Windsor Terrace, Portobello, Dublin 8, 01-4543391
WINE CHOICE An interesting but expensive list. Not many restaurants can boast the lovely Pomerol Château Gazin 1981, 1995, 1997, 1998, and 1999, from €93 to €350 a bottle. The cheapest wine is an Oz Cabernet-Merlot (€27), but you have to go above €30 for anything interesting. Some value at the higher end, though, such as Hermitage La Chapelle 2000 (€160). Château La Lagune 1981 (€97) is almost certainly way beyond its best, and Château Bel-Air Marquis d'Aligre 1983 (€98) is probably getting tired. Plenty of good claret, at a price, and occasional oddities, such as our Reichsgraf von Kesseletat Riesling Kabinett 1997 (€35), a mature, petrol-scented, sweet-and-sour delight.