Restaurant review: Hit the Old Spot for glorious gastropub grub
The interior of the Old Spot, Dublin 4
- The Old Spot
- 14 Bath Avenue, Dublin 4, D04 Y726
- Tel: 01-6605599
- theoldspot.ie
- How To: Mon-Fri: 12-3pm, 5-9.30pm; Sat: 12.30-3pm & 5-9.30pm; Sun: 12.30-3.30pm & 5.30-8pm
- The Bill: Sunday Lunch for three including a bottle of wine, pre-dinner drinks, cost €200.80
The sad news of recent restaurant closures has, we must hope, called attention to the difficulties in running a restaurant even in a period of prosperity.
Costs have continued to spiral, margins are tighter than ever before, while wage and running costs have also increased.
Restaurants are a vital part of any living vibrant economy, and our government must surely know that visitors will remember the food they ate as much as the scenery.
A reduction of the VAT rate to 9% is a no-brainer if we don’t want to see more closures.
The good news is that many restaurants are still pulling in the customers, even if profits are down.
I was genuinely surprised to hear that The Old Spot gastropub is 10 years old this year — it feels like it has been there for 40.
To celebrate their decade, they have a new cookbook due out later this month, written by Aoife Carrigy and published by 9 Bean Rows, so it seemed like as good a time as any to visit for a review.
While open every day, it is Sunday lunch that made The Old Spot’s name, so myself, the Engineer and the Physicist were there promptly at 1pm.
A spicy, punchy Bloody Mary was a solid beginning and woke up the appetite nicely, while the Physicist was pleased to be able to order a pint of Hope IPA on draught from a selection of independent beers, something too few bars and restaurants offer these days.
We knew to pace ourselves so ordered just two starters to share. Mussels pil pil (€16) combined sweet mussels with a lightly spicy creamy sauce into which we dipped crusty bread, tasty and comforting.
Ham hock croquette (€15) had a crisp golden crumbed exterior and was dense inside with salty-sweet pulled bacon. Celeriac rémoulade added some balance, but best of all was the home-made brown sauce whose savoury, fruity, sweet, and acidic flavours cut through the rich bacon. It should be bottled and sold separately.
In service to you, dear reader, we ordered three different mains, even though we all wanted the roast beef (€28). The Physicist’s beer-battered fish (€23) and beef-dripping chips was just as you could want, however, fresh fish in a crisp batter, crunchy house-made chips, and a good pea purée and tartare sauce on the side.
Proper chips like this remain a rarity, with 90% of restaurants using frozen or pre-cut. A side of fried pickled onion rings were also perfection.
The Engineer won out on the beef, and several pink and tender slices arrived with an umami rich gravy, herbal stuffing, properly rich cauliflower cheese and crisply cooked carrots and green beans.
I HAD the same accompaniments with my roast chicken (€26), which was also tasty and tender — a small improvement I would seek might be a crispier skin.
Myself and the Engineer have been taking turns cooking roast Sunday dinners for a couple of decades now so we were inevitably comparing our versions. We think we make crispier roasties (favouring smaller chunks), and I favour a more doughy Yorkshire pudding than the light airy one in The Old Spot, but I think I am nitpicking — I risk sounding like the stereotypical Italian comparing every dish to how Nonna would have cooked it.
The drinks list in The Old Spot is comprehensive and wide ranging, with prices starting at about €39, and includes a good range of fine wines (e.g. Ch. Lynch Bages 2010, 2006, 2005 and 1988).
Glass and carafe options are available, and our bottle of ‘Ô Font’ (€45), made by an Irish trio in the southern Rhône, was juicy and fruit-driven, and a solid match for our starters and mains.
For desserts (€10), the chocolate and pistachio tart with roast banana ice cream was the clear winner, rich and sticky and topped with some crumbled Yellowman honeycomb to add lift.
Basque cheesecake was tasty, but was a little drier than the ideal, but we still cleared the plate.
The Old Spot’s famed restaurant manager Denise McBrien runs a tight ship, and there was a happy buzz throughout the restaurant, with children being scooped into arms and lively conversations all around.
There is proper cooking happening here, and I’m looking forward to getting hold of the cookbook to figure out some of chef Mark Ahessy’s secrets, especially those fried pickled onions and that brown sauce.
Here’s to another 10 years.
- Food: 8.5/10
- Drink: 9/10
- Service: 9/10
- Ambiance: 9/10
- Value: 8.5/10
