Il Vicoletto, Italian Restaurant, Temple Bar.

Review

It's been a few years since I last ate in Il Vicoletto and since then it's changed hands, then closed down and has recently re-opened under new management, this time all Italian -- with a Sardinian maître d' and new chef. Despite this change, the restaurant has retained much of its original Roman menu. I went to dinner with Caitriona McBride who is a serious foodie -- as I write, she's in Catalunya eating in El Bulli -- so you know what we talked about over dinner: food.

I liked the menu enormously; it's a proper Italian menu with the kind of dishes you'd find in Italy. Apart from the standard offerings, such as bruschetta, Caprese salad and minestrone, there are dishes that you don't often see in Ireland, such as grilled scamorza, strozzaprete pasta (priest throttlers) and a Parmigiana of aubergines. Pasta dishes are around the €12 mark and I was pleased to see that the carbonara does not come with cream. The starters are all around €8 to €10 and the main courses run from €16.50 to €22.50.

The wine list is 100pc Italian and it's fairly priced; the excellent Montepulciano from Illuminati is €21.90 and both the Greco di Tufo and the Fiano di Avellino are €29.50. Big spenders would enjoy a Barolo 2000 for €68 or an Amarone of the same year for €70. We chose a white, the Falanghina from the Campania region, listed at €29.50.

Caitriona chose an asparagus, onion, tomato and goat's cheese tartlet to start, then sea bream in a white wine sauce for her main course. I don't get to eat scamorza often in Ireland, so I ordered that. It's a cheese like mozzarella, but it's aged a little and it's smoked. When it's grilled it goes gloriously runny and stringy, a terrific cold-weather dish. As an homage to Il Vicoletto's Roman heritage, I chose the saltimbocca for my main course.

The walls were hung with paintings of Italy, the waiters spoke Italian to one another and the sound system played Renzo Arbore and his orchestra doing Neapolitan songs, so if you didn't look outside, you could have been in Italy. Our starters arrived and they were good. The pastry shell of the tartlet was well made and the ingredients went well together. My scamorza consisted of two thick slices that had been grilled and these were served with bread and a small salad. A goat's cheese tartlet may not be typically Italian, but the scamorza was and I enjoyed it hugely.

If there were problems with our meal, they were small ones, and they surfaced in the main courses. Caitriona's fish was nicely presented and bream is a common fish on Italian menus. The saucing was good, but to both of our tastes the fish was slightly overcooked. This isn't a problem for many people who like fish cooked that way, but we both agreed that leaving fish with firm flesh after cooking is preferable to having it flaky.

Saltimbocca, which translates as 'jump in the mouth', is a classic Roman dish. It's slices of veal covered with a slice of Parma ham and sage leaves, cooked in a white wine sauce. What I had on my plate was exactly that, presented as it should be, but the veal suffered from being quite tough. Not so tough that I couldn't eat it -- I ate the lot -- but enough to be noticeable. We had a bowl of potatoes done as they often are in Italy, roasted with garlic and rosemary.

We finished up with a tiramisu, which we shared, then we lingered over a couple of well-made espressos. So, to sum up, this was as close to proper Italian cooking as I've come across in Ireland for a while. There's no doubt in my mind that the young men running Il Vicoletto now are passionate and dedicated to doing the job properly. The meal wasn't perfect, but I was delighted to see that here was a restaurant doing its best to be authentic, something that's rare enough in Ireland. Why that should be so puzzles me; you can get authentic Italian cuisine in the UK, France and Germany easily, but for some reason here in Ireland it's hard to come by.
Perhaps as Irish consumers become more discerning, we can finally lose lasagne with chips, carbonara with cream, pasta with chicken breast and pizza with pineapple. Our bill came to €84.85.