The Talbot 101: Old-school survivor on Talbot Street

A meat-and-two-veg restaurant in a sea of ethnic eateries and fast-food joints, writes CATHERINE CLEARY

SOME RESTAURANTS are like boulders in a fast-flowing river. They withstand torrents of change. Money froths and subsides around them and still they stay the same. Dublin has several, many of them sustained by expense accounts and a culture of reliable old favourites, both on the menu and in the faces of those who work there.

The Talbot 101 was a different kind of stalwart, more of a student and artsy place where people could spend large amounts of time and small amounts of money. Then things changed. The pizza and pasta joints began to soak up the student pound. The clientele got older and had less time to spend discussing life over a second bottle of wine into the early hours. But nearly two decades since it opened, this restaurant in Dublin’s north inner city is still here, and with the exception of the newer Bon Crubeen the 101 is still a lone meat-and-two-veg restaurant in a sea of ethnic restaurants and fast-food joints.

So where better to meet an old friend for a gossipy catch-up dinner? There is just one small problem. Both of us have to take a couple of stabs at finding the place. We’ve both been here before, but after-hours Talbot Street seems darker and more shuttered than my last visit. There’s also a complicated one-way system that seems to make real the “Well, I wouldn’t start from here” joke about looking for the place from anywhere south of the Liffey.

But once bearings are established it’s simple. There’s a €2 shop to one side selling Technicolor sacred heart pictures, and a shuttered outdoor clothing shop on the other. And the 101 is in number 101, upstairs.

Those stairs are something of a time machine, taking you straight back to the 1990s. The square room has a sunken area in the middle, black and wicker chairs and lost of wood of varying hues. Original oil paintings, which are for sale, are dotted around the walls. It’s a time before Farrow and Ball decor and mismatched granny delph.

We’re still in time for the early-bird menu of €21 for two courses with tea or coffee, but the set menu at €28 seems good value too, so we let rip.

There’s a home-smoked duck breast salad, which comes as good pink strips of tender meat with nutty toasted sunflower seeds in the dressing and delicious slices of roasted Jerusalem artichoke. With a raspberry vinaigrette and some lamb’s lettuce, it’s very tasty. Michael’s pan-fried prawns have been given a crisp finish. They’re good and they come with a zingy lemon and butter sauce with capers.

We order a bottle of 2009 Côtes du Rhône Grenache/Syrah (€25.40) and it’s served with a generous jug of iced water with fresh mint leaves. The mains are made with a heavier hand. A chargrilled sirloin steak (28 day-aged) is ordered rare and just squeaks in under that description. “A French person might quibble with that,” Michael says, as it fails to moo when he slices it, but it’s fine, an Irish interpretation of rare beef, and a very good piece of meat. My rump of Lough Erne lamb is very good, thickly sliced pink and tender pieces of lamb, very much the Mammy school of cooking. There’s a bucket of red wine gravy and two dense rounds of fondant potato, crisp outside fluffy inside. The only let-down is some underdone parsnips, which should have been roasted until they were collapsing into a sweeter version of themselves.

A raspberry and white chocolate cheesecake is good and a crème brûlée not so much. Its temperature and the slight milky consistency at the bottom make it taste like it’s been made and topped with its burnt sugar lid and then chilled. This dessert works best when it’s blow-torched within minutes of hitting the table.

The place has been nearly full all evening, with a birthday gathering beside us and the sense that this is still a favourite venue for a get-together. The cooking, which they describe as Mediterranean or Middle Eastern, seems more French bistro and Irish kitchen. These seem as good a middle ground as any from which to take on the next couple of decades.

Dinner for two with a bottle of wine and two coffees came to €88.40

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101 Talbot

100-102 Talbot Street, Dublin 1, tel: 01-8745011

Music: Bit musacky but the din of conversation soon drowns it out

Facilities: Basic and chilly but with fresh flowers

Food provenance: Good Lough Erne lamb and Kettyle beef are some of the familiar names

Wheelchair access: No

A fireside treat: the Bald Barista

It was the kind of grey cold day that needed a pink coat and red lipstick just to take it on, so a sign promising an open fire was an instant draw. It was written on a chalkboard outside the Avalon House on Aungier Street in Dublin, a hostel with the Bald Barista cafe downstairs. Inside, the promised fire was pumping out a coal-tang, a blast of heat and showers of sparks into the grate below. I had a bowl of spicy carrot and coriander soup, and a coffee strong enough to trot a mouse across for €5.90. Hearty food and some couches by the fire if you wanted to read a book in the dying days of January.

TWO POP-UP NIGHTS see chefs take over restaurants next month. First up is James Rigby, from the tiny Rigby’s on Leeson Street, who will take over the kitchen at the much larger Dining Room at La Stampa in Dawson Street on Friday, February 3rd. Tickets cost €40, including a cocktail reception and a choice of two starters, two main courses, entertainment and a band. La Stampa, 01-6774444. The other pop-up is the Seasons Supper Club trio of Masterchef runners-up led by Conal Markey who will cook in Eden in Temple Bar on February 10th. Book with Mark Matanes at Eden, 01-6705372.