This French fancy ain’t cheap - but it is totally worth it

As part of my policy of not always concentrating on the new, the restaurants that have recently opened, that are being talked about, this week I returned to one of those Dublin stalwarts, a restaurant that may seem to have been there forever but which, in fact, opened in 2009. I suppose that’s kind of middle-aged.

Pichet had certain advantages when it kicked off, not least being the subject of a fly-on-the-wall documentary about the planning and the lead-up to opening. Also, of course, it was seeking to do something that back then was pretty new: creating a French restaurant that was informal but not too informal and, in fact, not too French. These days it claims to be a classic take on a modern bistro.

If you know what that means you’re doing better than I am.

Dublin was somewhat wowed by the original interior, by the blue chairs with white piping and a general air of rather Continental sophistication. In the meantime it has had a least one complete makeover – the chairs are no longer blue and the bar area is bigger – and it remains busy. On a Monday evening it was jammers from 5.30pm, when we sat down.

‘It feels like we’re having our tea,’ remarked my companion who is not used to eating so early. ‘Or maybe dinner in the middle of the day,’ he added, exaggerating wildly.

I wish I could remember if Pichet did tablecloths in the early days but it certainly doesn’t now. Not withstanding some very good cooking and taking account of the prices being charged, the tables did seem rather bare. Table linen adds a whopping amount to the weekly bill and, considering the travails of the restaurant industry over the past couple of years, it may seem a little churlish to mention this but it did strike us.

The menu is short – four starters, four mains, three desserts – but it was no great hardship.

Occasionally I break with my usual habits and order soup, especially if it sounds interesting as this one did: sweetcorn, Iberico chorizo, sour cream and coriander (€12). So it proved, sweetly creamy chowder of corn kernels and scallions sharpened by the sourness, with little cubes of excellent chorizo adding further chew and depth charges of salty savouriness, plus a few swirls of neon green chive oil – or was that where the coriander came in? The flavour of the herb was unexpectedly and perfectly at home in this context.

Our other starter was eminently creamy burrata (€15) with wild garlic and hazelnut pesto – hazelnuts delivering a much nuttier hit than the usual pine nuts or walnuts – and cubes of poached pear. This was good but perhaps not exactly a wow: competent rather than clever, and there’s never any harm in that.

Onwards to mains and roasted halibut, prawn bisque, prawn raviolo, fennel and basil (€36) which was as good as it sounds and greater, in a sense, than the sum of its parts. The bisque bathed the entire dish and was suitably silky and

THE RAVIOLO WAS STUFFED WITH MORE PRAWN. THIS WAS LUXURIOUS STUFF

properly intense, the prawn element and the fennel pointing up the natural sweetness of the just-cooked fish. The raviolo was generously stuffed with yet more prawn. This was luxurious stuff.

Hand-rolled potato gnocchi, wild mushroom, Jerusalem artichoke, truffled emulsion (€25) was a creamy affair that didn’t quite hit the spot. The mushroom element was about as feral as Jacob Rees Mogg and included pickled enoki mushrooms that introduced a slightly weird sweet ’n’ sour note. Nicely al dente asparagus, wafer-thin slices of Jerusalem artichoke and some cooked pieces all added up to a perfectly pleasant dish that didn’t quite hang together. The flavour of truffle was detectable but not assertive enough.

No such complaints about desserts (€12). A warm chocolate mousse was a silky smooth angel’s hymn to really dark chocolate, so intense that it was heading off in the direction of savouriness, something we considered to be a good thing. Grown-up, in the best possible sense, was our considered opinion.

A white chocolate cheesecake on a fine biscuit base was surmounted by rhubarb as elegant and delicate as it gets and an impeccably creamy – not in the dairy sense – rhubarb sorbet. White chocolate can be unbearably sweet but this version seemed to have a faintly caramelised character that was cut by the sharpness of the rhubarb. A thoughtful bit of cooking.

Service was charming to the point that we could forgive one member of the team interrupting us twice in mid-sentence and describing a rather superior Bordeaux from Blaye as ‘entry level’. Was that a touch of snootiness? I don’t know.

In summary, Pichet sure ain’t cheap, but you get what you pay for. Mostly. With two pre-dinner drinks, a 50cl pichet of Riesling, a glass of Bordeaux and two good espressos, our bill was nearly €200.