Turn the page on an immaculate fine dining experience

The words ‘fine dining’ leave me cold, as a rule. It so often means needless complications, breathless reverence, a sense that it’s you, the diner, that’s under scrutiny as much as what comes on the succession of plates. Critics, usually American, occasionally say that fine dining – by which they mean the stratospheric reaches of the genre – is on the way out. Some even say it’s dead. There’s a headlong, and entirely justified, pursuit of breathtaking simplicity.

But every now and then I have a stratospheric experience and I realise that such cooking – it’s not just cooking, of course – has its life-affirming place. so it was at lunch in Chapter One. To cut to the chase, this was one of the best meals of my life.

Sure, it’s swanky and expensive and everything seems to run on velvet-smooth and silent casters. But the difference with Chapter One is a sense of generosity and humour and – a rarity at this level – proper humanity. Dare I say it? It’s fun.

My friend Marina O’Loughlin, who used to review restaurants for some of the serious newspapers across the water, said of this place: ‘Were Chapter One in St Germain rather than Parnell Square, I’m pretty sure the tyremen would be falling over themselves to award the full trio of twinklers and the stars-chasers would hand over €1,000 without drawing breath.’

She’s dead right.

Rehashing every detail of what we ate at lunchtime on a Friday would not only get pretty wearing to read, it would beggar my powers of description. So here’s an impressionistic account of the experience. Because it is, in the true meaning of the word, an experience rather than just a meal.

We had the surprise menu and, allergies and aversions duly checked, we proceeded to eat. Dainty morsels of incredible flavours to start, each presented – like every course – by Mickael Viljanen himself, something he does for every table.

First, a tiny red rugby ball whose crispness gave way to an explosion of liquid beetrooty borscht; then crisp celeriac with a small but fabulously intense burst of dehydrated and finely grated duck heart. Yes, definitely not something that could ever be attempted at home. Not forgetting two jewel-like depth charges of aged Parmesan and… oh, I’ve completely forgotten. I just know it was brilliant and even at this early stage I was in mid-swoon. These were just the amuses bouches.

A first course of steamed Co Offaly’s superb Mossfield Gouda mousse with slivers of winter truffle and creamy macadamia with a touch of the very rare and savoury vin jaune from Jura, was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten. I nearly licked the dish.

There was also a petri dish, so to speak, in which a layer of the silkiest foie gras lay beneath a covering of apple gel and sorbet with little flecks of smoked eel. Sweet, savoury, sharp, creamy, smoky: all these elements combining to make something even greater than the sum of the parts. Both of these dishes were mopped up – not a very elegant phrase in the circumstances, but accurate – with brioche flavoured with Guinness,

THIS WAS ONE OF THE BEST THINGS I’VE EVER EATEN, I NEARLY LICKED THE DISH

gloriously laminated and oozing molten butter as soon as the crisp exterior was broached to reveal the interior. Yes, even the bread is a work of art, certainly not something that recedes into the background.

A little dish of raw Dublin Bay prawn within a cucumber-scented jelly with a spoonful of Chapter One’s own caviar – sourced from Paris and, unusually, free of the tiny amount of borax that is generally added – on top somehow combined deep, deep flavour with the freshness of a frosty morning. How do they do this?

The point is that the kitchen here does that kind of thing: performing minor miracles every day.

Onwards to Donegal lobster, barbecued briefly until just à point and served in a broth that managed to be both delicate and deep at the same time, with a tiny dice of spring vegetables from the Luberon. On the side came little cappelletti pasta packages of lobster in a creamy, buttery, lobstery emulsion.

Milk-fed lamb from Lozère, in the foothills of the Massif Central, came in two forms, a noisette and a deconstructed shoulder seasoned with a gentle dill and seaweedinfused vinegar, and a kind of essence of green olive. The background to this was a brilliantly coloured fermented red pepper paste, something that in other hands might well have smothered the other elements. Of course, it didn’t. Oh, and the best potatoes boulangère that anyone could imagine, with a creamy, brilliantly emerald sauce of wild garlic.

For dessert there was a meticulous riff on rhubarb and custard, the candy pink rhubarb in tiny cubes set in a jelly with a Sauternes and rhubarb sorbet on top, vanilla-flavoured crème fraiche and a crunchy little ginger element below.

Coffee and petits fours followed. And what petits fours. One, a hazelnut delight with little dots of delciousness individually piped around its margin in a way that reminded me of watchmaking, another with the bitter orange kick of Campari more concentrated than I’ve ever had it in a glass, and… I could go on, but you get the picture.

Every single element is deeply considered, every detail flawless.

As I say, this is just an impression. Chapter One has to be experienced. Because this was not just lunch. It was an experience.