Tried and trusted
An old warehouse, well-lit and transformed into something attractive and solid, something proportionate, something that reflects the restaurant and the experience it offers.
This is a cheer-making place where the food is an ensemble player rather than one of those solo performers so celebrated by the gruberatti. Here the food is a lubricant, a contributor to the joy of the occasion rather than the centre of attention.
The restaurant pitches itself at mid-market dining and does so very well. Heston may provoke with his snail porridge and mustard ice cream but Isaac’s mild Madras lamb curry, a simple/complex dish, can be just as cheering, and more soothing, in the middle of a busy working week.
We — DW and I, though not the long-suffering, regular DW but an old, school-days friend — visited on a Tuesday. We arrived just after our days’ work and the airy, attractive main room was almost empty. It was almost distressing in a gruberatti, petal-tender sort of way — there’s nothing like the distraction of an empty space and the echo of your whispers to distract from pleasurable company. However, the room quickly filled up. A good number of Irish discovered the joy of moderate, midweek socialising in restaurants during our decade of hubris and those who can — lucky them — persist with this most civilised and civilising habit.
On weekends, their ranks are often swollen by a distinct class of diner, what we shall recklessly call the Pinot Grigio Sisterhood. Groups — or covens as one of my separated-broke-and-single friends might scowl — of 30-something women escaping for an evening from negative-equity, golfing partners slipping past the first glow of attraction, job worries and second-job (commonly known as family and children) worries, debt and bills, for an evening of cooing about shoes, handbags, Sophie’s violin lessons, Sorcha’s latest disastrous affair and other life-saving irrelevancies. And, best of luck to them, sluices of pinot grigio. (No letters please, I know they are constitutional lawyers, astro-physicists, businesswomen and great homemakers, too.)
DW opened play with the omnipresent goat’s cheese and beetroot salad. This one, amplified by peppers and basil oil, passed muster by a good margin. So, too, did my tempura of prawns — also omnipresent. So neat when done properly, so disconcerting, again in a petal-tender way, when off the mark. These were selected from a list of five predictable starters and pointed to an absence of adventure. Even one dish outside the predictable axis of warm chicken salad and duck confit would have moved the experience up a notch.
For her main course DW opted for another old reliable, scampi and chips. She pronounced herself more than satisfied. I chose a lamb curry, often a step into the dark; one man’s curry is another man’s and all that. And too often one man’s lamb is another man’s mutton — why would anyone put lamb in a curry?
This, however, was comfort food of the three-blanket kind and packing just enough warmth to make the second half of the week seem a celebration in waiting. It was embellished with all the bric-à-brac that change a curry into something more exotic than a common-garden stew.
It was a compliment to the meal that when it came to desserts, our ambitions had been sated. We instead chose a communal cheese plate, blathering and picking at it for half an hour.
The wine was, in those bizarre restaurant terms, a value-for-money Riesling, Rheingau Carl Ehrhard 2007 at €25.50 — a shade more expensive than advertised on Isaac’s website.
This is a good, everyday restaurant and answers very well the need to have decent food in a nice place to meet friends so we can rejuvenate each other without having to push the gas bill back under the radio for another week.
