Bistro Sola, Naas, Co. Kildare.

Paolo Tullio's Review

There's a point that you reach in life when your memory starts to let you down. As a rough rule, it deteriorates almost hand in hand with your eyesight, but whereas a pair of glasses will correct your visual deficiencies, there's nothing yet invented that will fix a faulty memory.

That's not entirely a bad thing, for example a clear conscience is often the result of a bad memory. Another plus is that you can enjoy entertaining things more than once, each time with the freshness of a first discovery. Put another way, it allows you to laugh at a joke even though you've heard it before.

My favourite memory story concerns Sir Thomas Beecham, the conductor. He had returned to his hotel after conducting the Hallé Orchestra, when he saw a lady sitting beside the lift he was about to use. He knew he knew her, but couldn't remember her name. He managed a short conversation and thought he'd got away with it. As he stepped into the lift he remembered that she had a brother. "And how is your dear brother?" he asked. "Well, thank you, Sir Thomas." "And what is he doing now?" "Oh, he's still king."

These days I find myself in a state best described as a mixture of amnesia and déjà vu. I find myself saying, 'I think I've forgotten this before' and more often than not I have. This week, for example, I visited a restaurant in Naas and it was only as I sat at the table I realised that I'd been there before, not once, but twice. I'd gone to have dinner in Bistro Sola in Naas with fashion designer Lainey Keogh. The directions we had said it was above Kavanagh's pub in the Main Street, so it was easy to find. We were shown to a table in the corner where we got a view over the street and it was at that moment that my defective memory decided to work properly. I'd sat exactly at this spot when this space used to be a restaurant called Les Olives back in early 2006. Before that it was called Jo Olives and I reviewed it ten years ago.

It's changed a lot since it was Les Olives. Firstly the prices are now considerably less. Back in 2006 main courses here were almost up to €40, a price that was sustainable only by the wilder excesses of the Tiger economy. Secondly the rather tired and cheap décor has gone and a crisp, clean, bright interior has taken its place. Plain pastel colours and stylish table settings make the room feel comfortable and smart, exactly as a bistro should be.

There are two menus to choose from, the early/late bird and an à la carte. I encouraged Lainey to choose from the à la carte and I chose from the set menu, which gave me three courses for €22. There was also a blackboard with the day's specials, which included red snapper, a fish you don't often find on menus. Lainey chose a winter root vegetable soup to start and then the saffron and pea risotto for her main course.

The set menu had three starters and four main courses to choose from, so I started with the mozzarella and rocket bruschetta and followed that with the beef and Guinness pie. The wine list has some good wines listed, but with only two under €28, it seemed to be badly priced for a bistro -- I would have preferred to have seen a larger choice in the €20 to €30 bracket. This is the price range most people are happy with and it's perfectly possible to create a list that accommodates that price range while allowing a decent mark-up for the restaurant. Lainey doesn't drink, so I chose a glass of Mudhouse Sauvignon Blanc for myself at €7.20 and we had two bottles of mineral water as well.

Our starters were very good, the soup was properly nourishing and wholesome in an appropriately autumnal way and my bruschetta was nicely presented with good mozzarella melted on top. There was a selection of bread rolls on the table, still warm, but not quite cooked through, giving them a doughy consistency.

The main courses arrived and they too were nicely presented, but I had issues with both dishes. I don't know who first started the rumour that risotto should be cooked 'al dente', but whoever it was certainly never ate a risotto in Italy.

Let me put it this way, when bits of rice get stuck between your teeth, like pieces of grit, then it's not 'al dente', that's undercooked. Apart from being the wrong consistency, there's another problem: under-cooking means the lectins in the grains are still intact. How do I put this delicately? Undercooked rice gives you flatulence, it makes you gassy, it bloats you and you get trouser coughs.

Three or four minutes more of cooking would have been better in this case, because the flavours were good and you could actually taste the saffron.

I had a small pot in front of me, what the French call a 'marmite'. In it were tasty bits of beef cooked with Guinness, but this was not a pie. It was stew, and the piece of puff pastry baked separately and placed on top of the pot didn't turn it into a pie. It was however a rather good stew and might have been better described as one.

We finished up with a chocolate cake which we shared and I had one of the better espressos I've had recently. This brought the bill to €61 without service charge, exactly half what I paid the last time I ate here in 2006. It's only one example, but it does show that restaurateurs are keeping their margins and their prices down in 2009.

One last thing, the service in Bistro Sola was really good.

Bistro Sola, 10 Main Street, Naas, Co Kildare. Tel. 045 898 998