Restaurant review: Pearl Brasserie

THE art of lunch has taken a serious battering in recent years. Lunch was ‘for wimps’ we were told in the 1980s but nobody ever believed that, and when I began working in Dublin in the 1990s it was high quality lunches that made me excited about restaurants.

I have particularly fond memories of the £13.50 three-course lunch Derry Clarke used to offer when l’Ecrivain was still in its original basement location.

I was in my early 20s and it felt like the most decadent thing imaginable to be eating food of such quality in the middle of the day.