Restaurant Review: A magnificent tale at Chapter One

This is now Ireland’s best restaurant — with a breathtaking technical precision and masterful manipulation of flavours

Chapter One by Mickael Viljanen Picture: Barry McCall.

• Chapter One by Mickael Viljanen
• 18-19 Parnell Square N, Rotunda, Dublin 1, D01 T3V8
• Open: Lunch, 12.30-2pm, Thurs to Sat; Dinner, 6.30pm-9.30pm
• Telelphone: 01 873 2266
• chapteronerestaurant.com

When Sons, Numbers 1 & 2, and I planned our expedition to Chapter One, Ross Lewis still helmed the iconic Dublin restaurant — consistently good enough to merit its Michelin Star, often superb in its refined take on a contemporary Irish cuisine, DNA traceable back to his legendary, late mentor, Myrtle Allen, and her own epicurean elevation of traditional Irish farmhouse cooking.

However, Lewis is no longer in the kitchen, having handed over the baton to Chef Mickael Viljanen, most recently two Michelin-starred chef of The Greenhouse, a deep and jaw-dropping rupture in the national culinary firmament.

The Progeny are no strangers to hospitality but the plush, hushed reception area softens their boisterous cough until the restaurant’s justly renowned welcome reassures them, Chapter One having led the pack for some years in combining superb world-class fine dining service with deceptively casual charm.

Canapés commence: crisp miniature pastry shell, cradling tartare of raw Irish Angus bavette, with yuzu kosho (flavour bomb of salt-fermented chillis and citric yuzu), horseradish emulsion. Viljanen’s exclusive caviar blend adds nutty umami, bolstering tender sweet meat. No 2 Son’s remorseless teenage mastication drops a few gears as he registers textures and flavours. This is really good, he gushes. It is.

Tomato Gazpacho

An elegant red ovoid perched on a golden spoon requires the merest flexing of tongue to crack the ‘shell’, flooding mouth with an exquisite tomato gazpacho, peppered with French household favourite, Savora mustard, and soothed with lush, balmy Tuscan olive oil. I close my eyes, willing it to last forever.

Mains begin, shimmering amber jelly of Thornhill duck neck, daintily speckled with gels and creams, layered over smoked eel cream; atop buttery, sweet Maison Lafitte foie gras; with laminated Guinness and treacle brioche.

Winsome, plump, hand-dived scallop is centred in frisky elderflower vinegar and Jalapeno bouillon, topped with brunoise of macerated cucumber and Oscietra Caviar, the latter’s nutty iodine anchoring an ethereal dish that might otherwise float away.

Superb crusty house-baked sourdough baguette, with salty butter, becomes our default cutlery for the night, perfect for remnants beyond scope of knife, fork or spoon.

Donegal BBQ Lobster.

Burnished, glistening tail of Donegal Lobster is barbecued, brushed with chocolatey-coffee-ish cacao pod liquor, and Kari Gosse, an iconic Breton ‘secret recipe’ spice blend. Alongside is sweet carrot, citric pomelo, tart redcurrants and a fulsome foam of lobster head jus. 

Lobster rice, with saffron and sobrasada sausage, is submerged in lobster head sabayon. What reads as the culinary equivalent of cramming 20 clowns and four elephants into a Mini somehow presents on the palate as a precise, even singular dish.

Lewis’s kitchen celebrated finest Irish produce so serving French Challans black chicken may seem a radical departure but Viljanen simply can’t source commercially reared Irish poultry of this calibre.

A farcie of delicious gamey thigh, stuffed with diced truffle, cooked low and slow, glazed on the grill, is brushed with lemon verbena and black truffle, served with kohlrabi poached in chicken fat, parsley puree, and vin jaune sauce emulsified with roasted chicken skin butter. Riding shotgun is an elegant tart of chicken offal with cream of liver and pickled Granny Smith — Sunday roast for the Gods.

Pre-dessert of whipped, frozen blackcurrant marshmallow, kombu and eucalyptus, pearls of frozen blackcurrant leaf milk, poached meringue lemon paper, perfectly transitions from savoury to sweet.

Wild Strawberries & Jasmine Rice.

Rustic ‘strawberry tart’ is an elemental exercise in revealing the ‘sublime’ in ‘simple’, laminated croissant pastry topped with glazed wild strawberries, albeit flecked with gold leaf, fast becoming No 2’s favourite ingredient, comes with honey vinegar Chantilly cream. Pink and pretty chocolate rondelle is utterly beguiling, imploding into an airy parfait of wild strawberries and jasmine rice.

Then consuming Chartreuse jelly, violet ice cream, crystallised fennel might seem wanton gluttony but it is blessedly light, glorious violet singing in the upper register.

We reserve wanton gluttony for cheese, No 1 Son and I relishing caramel of Cáis na Tíre, dredging baguette through the indolent ooze of a ripe, creamy Époisse.

You simply cannot compare Lewis’s kitchen to that of Viljanen, both so different in style, delivery and culinary temperament, but, tonight, the latter’s sublime craft, technical precision and masterful manipulation of flavours is often breathtaking, like watching a man formation flying five kites in a hurricane and never once tangling the strings.

Chapter One is just about the most perfect setting to showcase such a talent and is now Ireland’s best restaurant. When Michelin Man comes a-calling, three could very well be the magic number.