The Valparaiso restaurant in Monkstown used to be a cosy adobe-type place with warm yellow walls and candles in niches and a Spanish menu with lots of tapas. Enter the interior decorators and voila, it's now a smart black and white room with big mirrors, tiny halogen lights strung on wire cables and black framed photos of the insides of flowers.
It's not strictly Spanish any more. The new menu is Mediterranean, with more of a leaning towards Italy than Spain.
The best tables are at the front of the restaurant, where there are windows overlooking the street. Further back, the room narrows and right at the back is a corral of non-smoking tables where the waitress was leading us.
The tables here were crowded together and it was very hot, thanks to the low ceiling. That wouldn't do, and the next best thing was a table for two in the middle section of the room which felt cooler. It was a tiny table, so much so that when our two large main course plates were on it, there was barely room for anything else in between. To be fair we were offered a couple of larger tables, but since both were in front of an unforgivingly huge mirror, we declined.
Wine first, and the waitress persuaded us to try one of their most popular whites, a Bellingham Cape Gold from South Africa. This was a light summery aperitif-style wine, perfect for a warm evening. It came in a squat green bottle with bunches of grapes rioting around the bottom that was crying out to be turned into a candlestick.
That put us in a good mood and so did the starters. David's polenta with chorizo, gorgonzola and cream sauce had a fabulous texture and taste. Two triangles of velvety smooth polenta were a perfect match for the dense smoky sauce.
My calamari was good, but not up to the same standard. The hoops of calamari were in a very light batter - possibly just a dusting of flour - and they were a little limp and inexplicably salty. A dish of delicious salsa for dipping came on the side.
Paella for two as a main course was a mistake and scandalously expensive at £28. We should have had the dish that everyone else seemed to have ordered - fillet steak perched on bacon and parmesan mash, or the grilled salmon on a bed of greens, or penne pasta with roasted Mediterranean vegetables, but paella it was.
We went through a paella phase a few years ago, cooking it for dinner parties on a regular basis, but we lost heart having spent a whole day preparing a complicated version for a Spanish friend who, when it was presented to her in all its saffron-drenched glory, looked as though we had given her haggis. She said, "Ees nice, but ees no paella". The Valparaiso version wouldn't have pleased Conchita either.
It had all the correct ingredients - rice, chunks of fish and chicken and mussels on top, - but the overall effect was terrible.
The point of paella is that the ingredients cook slowly together, but the impression we got with this one was that everything had been cooked separately, maybe even earlier in the day, and was then thrown together and piled into an authentic looking long handled pan. The rice was chewy and had a processed, Uncle Ben's taste to it, and again it was incredibly salty.
The dish was dismally portion-controlled. There were four small nuggets of salmon, four of chicken, four large prawns that had curled in on themselves and weren't worth the effort of breaking into, four yawning mussels and a two hoops of calamari. There was a scattering of dull green peas, and I counted two flecks of pepper, one green and one red. The only thing more to say about this dish is: don't have it.
The waiter was concerned that we had left a good bit behind and asked if it had been all right. When I said it hadn't, he went off very concerned and the manager came to ask if we would like something else. This was all done very nicely and politely, so we felt guilty for having opened our mouths.
Desserts restored the good humour. My Creme Catalana turned out to be a very decent chilled creme caramel, while David had an excellent pear and ginger tart.
These, we were told, were on the house to make up for the paella.
Ambience-wise you couldn't do better. There was a pleasant buzz all evening and many of the tables were taken by women in groups of three and four, most of them with dazzling blonde highlights.
We'll go back to try some of the other dishes, so don't be put off. The bill came to £53 before service and without those desserts.
Valparaiso, 99 Monkstown Road, Monkstown, Co Dublin. Tel: 01 2801992
Orna Mulcahy can be contacted at omulcahy@irish-times.ie
