Bijou Restaurant Rathgar

Bijou Bistro is in Rathgar Village. There's a few suburban restaurants that appeal to a customer base way beyond their immediate residents; Foxrock's Bistro One, Glasthule's Rasam, and Stillorgan's China Szechuan are examples, and Bijou Bistro in Rathgar is another of these. Paolo enjoyed a lunch with friends.  

The downstairs Bistro is more casual than the restaurant upstairs and it was downstairs that we ate. The room is in two halves, one on either side of the bar and counter in the middle. The chairs are comfortable, the tables plain wood. The lighting is well designed and the colours muted and pleasing. The downstairs menu is simple, the sort of menu that you find increasingly, with simple dishes that can be eaten as just one course or combined into a more substantial meal.

The starters run from a soup of day, which was carrot, ginger and chilli on the day, at €5.95, to €10.95 for a chicken pastrami sandwich. Between these two extremes most of starters were priced between €6 and €8, and included salmon and crab fish cakes, Caesar salad, a seafood chowder, a salad Niçoise and eggs Florentine. A second page lists more substantial dishes, which are priced between €10 and €12 and included confit duck leg, pan-seared salmon, fish and chips, lamb shanks, a beef and vegetable pie, red Thai curry and an oriental stir fry. Enough of choice then for lunch.

None of us were drinking, but I did take a look at the wine list. There are eight wines in the House Selection', all around €20, then twenty-five others including four half bottles. These run between €25 and €35 and there's a decent choice. Nice to see a couple from the Bonny Doon winery and a Sauvignon reserve from New Zealand's Joe Babich. Among the sparklers there's the excellent Prosecco Valdobbiana, which is priced at €33. Having seen what I might have liked to drink, we ordered a non-alcoholic beer for Gerard and a big bottle of mineral water each for Deirdre and me.

For starters Deirdre had ordered the mozzarella tartlet, Gerard the soup and I couldn't resist the eggs Florentine. When they arrived at the table they were well presented on plain white crockery and we set to. The soup was exactly as described, the carrot was enlivened with a touch of ginger and spiced with a punch of chilli. The mozzarella tartlet was filled with the cheese, sweet peppers and basil and came with a salad of mixed leaves. I thought if suffered a little from a pre-baked pastry tart that meant it had become very crisp on its second heating. My eggs Florentine, which is poached eggs served on spinach on a toasted muffin and covered with a Mornay sauce was very good.

For main courses Gerard had gone traditional and ordered the beef and vegetable pie, which was served in bowl with a piece of puff pastry on top. It was, I suppose, more of a stew than a pie, but it tasted good and bit by bit Gerard ate it all. Deirdre had picked the home-made burger, which was a fairly substantial dish. It came on a toasted bun with sauté onions and a salad of mixed leaves with an orange and mustard dressing. Simple, but good. Like a good reviewer, I'd picked the fish and chips.

There are dishes that are simple that can be ordinary and pedestrian, but if done well become something fit for gourmets. Fish and chips is one of them. A bag of soggy chips and the piece of cod that surpasseth all understanding is something we've all had from takeaways. What I got was exceptional. The cod was fresh, perfectly cooked to the minute, and the batter was as delicate as any I've had. A really excellent dish.

We finished having a peek upstairs into the more formal upstairs room, where feature wallpaper remind one of the ladies of Downton Abbey, on our way to the lovely heated terrace. The Bijou is back, bigger than ever, and Rathgar is a better place for it