Looking for a spot suitable for a secret assignation, or just a nice glass of wine and some tasty nibbles? Tom Doorley spills the beans
"I hope you're not going to write about this place," said the man at the next table. "If you do, I'll have nowhere to bring my mistress." I didn't make any promises, and when my companion arrived, I mentioned our neighbour's concern.
"Well, my wife loves this place," he said hurriedly. "And I hope you keep quiet about it because enough people know already." With an expansive gesture he indicated the small, but virtually empty front room of George's Wine Bar.
"Look," he said. "It's lunchtime on Thursday and we have the place almost to ourselves. It's great." I didn't point out that empty wine bars usually don't last very long, but I do know that the place is packed at weekends. Many customers, it seems, like the idea of a few glasses of wine, a bit of a nibble and - this is where I depart from them - plenty of live piano music. Spare me the music, please, but the wine and the grub I can understand.
Because we are new to wine bars in this land of ours, many of them are actually restaurants with big wine lists. In fact, some of the lesser ones are not even that. George's strikes me as being the genuine article. True, the wines appear to be sourced mainly from O'Brien's, but if a restaurant wants to buy wine from a retailer, it could hardly find a better one. And the food is there, not as the main act, so to speak, but as a kind of side show.
What we ate was strange, but good. The very brief menu appears to lean in a vaguely Spanish direction, despite the fact that the chef is Polish via Italy (or possibly Italian via Poland), and there's a vague suggestion of tapas about the whole thing.
We shared a big slice of tortilla with red peppers. This was the usual thick Spanish omelette of potatoes, with the rather non-Spanish addition of slivers of pepper throughout. It was very decent stuff, just the right accompaniment to a glass of bone-dry Loire Chenin Blanc.
What the menu described as beef medallions were indeed slices of beef, marinated with pepper certainly, garlic probably, and red wine possibly. Grilled until well done, but still pretty juicy, they were bloody good. Not bloody at all, really, but tasty. They came with patatas bravas, cubes of crisp spud with a top dressing of slightly spicy tomato sauce. Not exactly haute cuisine, but perfectly decent.
Medallions are big in George's, possibly as a tribute to the jewellery of some of the regulars, and pork came in the same form, marinated with lemon, sage, pepper and garlic, as far as I could gather. They were smaller and more numerous than their bovine cousins, each presented impeccably on a sliver of barely-cooked apple. And in the centre was a little dollop of what seemed to be minced pork mixed with unidentified but quite yummy stuff, possibly involving more sage. This dish was so good that we had a second one. What higher praise can there be?
George's doesn't seem to do puds seriously. Possibly this is because people who drink lots of red wine don't think of sweet things after a while. So the three cheesecakes that comprise the dessert menu here are probably produced with mistresses in mind. We tried the Baileys version and the lemon one, and can report that they were perfectly adequate. If we were having them again, we would plump for the Baileys. After all, if you're having something sickly sweet and rubbery, why not go the whole hog?
With three espressos, two glasses of white wine and a bottle of Pesquera Crianza, the bill for this rather indulgent and leisurely lunch came to €113.50. Next time, I'll have the gnocchi, homemade and flashed in the pan until lightly browned - which may be a Polish influence. They certainly seemed like the real thing and cost a mere €7.50. u tdoorley@irish-times.ie
George's Wine Bar (01-6797000), 29 South Frederick Street, Dublin 2. Lunch from noon, Tue-Fri. Dinner from 5pm, Tue-Sat. Music till late, Thur-Sat.
WINE CHOICE Wine by the not over-generous glass at €7.50 (for our lovely Château de Fesles) and €9.50 is pretty steep, even by Dublin standards, but bottle prices are keen, especially the Pesquera Crianza at €37. La Grave Minervois (€20) is chunky stuff, Château La Mas Neuf (€23) is a ripe Costières de Nîmes and Los Vascos Cabernet (€26) delivers Chilean fruit with a degree of French elegance. Zenato Ripasso (€35) is a stunner, essentially Valpolicella given an Amarone-based boost, while Fonterutoli Chianti Classico 2002 (€38) is one of Tuscany's most elegant reds. All in all, a very attractive list and reasonable value by the bottle.