Tom Doorley reviews Andersons creperie, Drumcondra
Drumcondra is a bit like Galway. The similarity may not be immediately apparent but both places should have more good restaurants. Drumcondra is now a vaguely fashionable suburb - unlike when I was growing up there - and there has been wholesale gentrification of its Victorian heartland which lies opposite the Archbishop's palace. Property prices are high, but you can still save 25 per cent on what you would have to pay for a similar house in, say, Ranelagh. On one short road of cute redbrick houses I counted seven recently-registered Mercedes of varying sizes.
If this represents disposable income, there should be half a dozen good local restaurants of the sort that are quite common south of the river. But no, there is only one and it's a fairly recent addition to the north inner suburbs. Surely it could support a few more. Oh well, I suppose it's better than Galway, if you take a per capita view. But there are no tourists to fleece. The charms of Drumcondra are subtle; the only world-class draw is the National Botanic Gardens, which are technically in posher Glasnevin. And nobody goes there for the grub, as I pointed out some months back.
Andersons Mark I is a glorious little oasis on The Rise, just off Griffith Avenue. It has an excellent deli, great open sangers and a wine list that is as good as it is short. And now its satellite, Andersons Creperie, lies across the barely perceptible border in darkest Drumcondra, not far from the palace.
This is a cheerful place, smartly painted but looking as if it has been always there. Its Victorian shopfront is delightful, the atmosphere buzzes, the staff are charming and the grub is pretty good, too. There are open sandwiches of vast proportions, platters of cheese and charcuterie, savoury buckwheat pancakes and sweet wheat flour ones. There's a short wine list and soon they will be selling Normandy cider which is what, strictly speaking, we should be drinking with crepes.
A platter, for €14.95, made a very decent starter for the two of us: cheese, salami, a good pork terrine, roasted peppers and a chargrilled slice of courgette, all served with reasonable bread. And then to the crepes. The problem with buckwheat pancakes is that they are naturally rather bland. Their function is to provide a vehicle for other stuff and the other stuff has to be pretty strongly flavoured if the whole thing is going to work.
My only - and rather mild - criticism of our savoury crepes is that the buckwheat dominated. In one, the combination of melted Raclette, mushrooms and peppers got a bit lost. A little serving of punchy chutney was a help. In the other, ham, brie and mushrooms put up a slightly more flavoursome performance. Perhaps reducing the size of the crepe and boosting the dosage of filling would help.
On the other hand, a sweet pancake with that now classic combination of chocolate and thinly-sliced ripe banana could not be improved. The texture of the crepe was like silk, the filling just sweet enough, the whole thing meltingly delicious. Yes, simple food is very often the best.
I desisted and finished off a generous chunk of Roquefort which I had saved from the starter. Munching this with a glass of ripe, spicy Gigondas before having a bracing espresso was a very French experience.
Three cheers for Anderson's decision to stick with simple cooking and for making their crepes in full view of their customers. We need more restaurants like this, restaurants that are in tune with how most of us actually eat most of the time. Judging by the business they were doing on a wet Monday lunchtime, I suspect that Andersons has judged perfectly the mood of its customers. And, of course, they are providing an oasis of good grub at reasonable prices in a culinary wasteland.
u tdoorley@irish-times.ie
Andersons Creperie, Carlingford Road, Drumcondra, Dublin 9, 01-8305171Château Beaumont, admittedly in the off-vintage of 2002, is a steal at €26.95, while Sançerre (Domaine St Pierre) at the same price is unprecedented in Dublin. Esprit de Nijinsky from the O'Brien stable in Provence makes a spicy house red at a very keen €18.95, or €4.95 a glass, while Domaine Raimbault-Pineau Côteaux du Giennois is a zesty white for €19.95. There's a Bourgogne Pinot Noir from Rodet for €22.95 and Domaine Peirière Merlot from the Pays d'Oc for €17.95 (not often you see any wine for that kind of money). But if you want to be extravagant, our luscious Gigondas Domaine de Boissan was €28.95 very well spent.