Blooming great

RESTAURANTS: Bloom plays it safe but still packs a weighty punch

WHAT ARE THEingredients for success in the restaurant trade these days? Pasta, chicken and steaks are bound to feature. Exotic, for most Irish consumers, means sweet chilli sauce or prawns in filo pastry, not snails or morcilla.

It means that restaurants need to be careful. Window dressing the menu with stuff that gets the gastric juices of food enthusiasts flowing is a mugs’ game if none of it sells in decent quantities. There is a tendency for a lot of us to make appreciative noises about original dishes and then go with some safe, dull option.

So it’s hard to blame restaurants for giving us what we appear to want. In Ireland, the overall standard of cooking has never been better and the value available is, by and large, compelling, and yet there’s very little sense of excitement.

The menu at Bloom Brasserie, in a rather cool Baggot Street basement, has a touch of excitement about it, not least in the fact that the chef, Pól Ó hEannraich has come from Dax. I like the idea of very broadly defined tapas at the bar (à la Dax), and serving hand-dived scallops rather than pumped-up, watery ones. And I like the fact that the cooking here is very simple and based on very carefully sourced raw materials. Prices for dinner, with starters around €8 and mains at €19-31, are steep, but the set lunch at €12-14 for two or three courses offers some of the best value in the country. Tapas, served in the bar, and on the terrace from 5.30pm, are very good, and weigh in at €6-13.

Our meal was a combination of tapas and the dinner menu. White beans with sundried tomato and shallot, nicely seasoned and sharply dressed, were clean and fresh. Gambassautéed with lemon and garlic were plump and pleasant, providing some attractive juices for hoovering up with good bread. A single, impeccably cooked scallop with a delicate salad and a sweet-and-sour dressing was exceptional.

A salad of Cashel Blue, walnuts and pear with a citrus dressing was faultless if nothing that we had not seen many times before. Chargrilled loin of wild venison, on the bone, with shallot purée and mushrooms, even at €26, was a fine dish. And there was no fecking around with side orders. It came with a generous pillow of buttery, creamy mashed potatoes.

We had a go at the impressive cheeseboard, which arrived wreathed in earthy odours and with each cheese in peak condition, and shared a pleasantly sharp apple crumble served with very rich homemade vanilla ice cream.

Bloom is well worth a visit. This is the kind of restaurant that could carry off a more adventurous menu but, given the times in which we live, they are playing it safe. Well, even in safe mode, it’s pretty darn good. With a couple of glasses of white, a bottle of red, coffees and mineral water, our bill came to just under €110.

THE SMART MONEY

A two-course lunch and a glass of wine will cost less than €20, or three tapas and a glass of wine for about €22 in the evening.

WINE CHOICE

Of the 60-odd wines available, there are none that I would be unwilling to have. Highlights include the outstanding Domaine Thibert Pouilly-Vinzelles “les Longeays” (€48), the lovely pink Bergerie de l’Hortus (€31), spicy and smoky Domaine des 7 Chemins Crozes-Hermitage (€40) and Domaine Cros Minervois (€30).