Nothing but the beef

The Butcher Grill in Ranelagh has been packing them in since it opened, and with good reason: the beef is luscious, writes CATHERINE CLEARY

TAKE ONE OLD burrito place, add a simple idea, a Facebook page, some stylish themed decor and fanatically-friendly staff. Then open the doors and watch it fill to the gills. So it has been with The Butcher Grill in Dublin’s Ranelagh.

This winter, the neighbourhood cafes and the places around the corner were popular during the snowy conditions last month. The Facebook page kept people posted on this one’s progress as it was revamped. It’s a clever way of getting potential diners to feel an affinity to a place before they’ve even tasted the food.

I’m the first to arrive on an icy Monday night. It’s in the middle of the village, close to my first bedsit. I get a vivid flashback to the bath one flight down, the “kitchen” in a cupboard and the climbing rope my mother tied to the bed leg in case of fire.

There is nothing so basic here, no name above the door, just two black, butchers’ diagrams with beef sectioned into cuts. Inside, speckled antique mirrors are surrounded by curved cream subway tiles, with tall bar tables and leather-padded benches and stools. When I sit down, warmth billows around me. A ceiling-mounted blast heater gives the impression of sitting under a bonnet blowdryer with curlers in. It’s not the worst feeling on a night like this, but it could do with a tweak.

My Ranelagh foodie friend arrives and is greeted like a family member. She has already tried this place and had eaten once in the sister restaurant Dillinger’s across the road. We get some good bread with a wonderful grass-green olive oil and salt to dip.

The menus are printed on brown card, to go with the retro butcher shop theme. (It’s something you’re never really allowed to forget.) Unfortunately it means that they’re tricky to read in cosy candlelight. Our waitress gives us a small torch to decipher the dessert menu, which is thoughtful but seems a bit of a sideways approach to a problem that a new printout on lighter card could solve.

I order the seafood antipasti (€12) to start and my friend goes with the pressed rabbit foie gras, ham hock and celeriac (€11). We opt for the côte de boeuf for two (€45) as a main course, and a bottle of the house red, a Tuscan Caburnio (€26). The six varieties of house reds and whites are customised with the labels Bovine I, II and III.

They may be milking the cow theme, but with food this good it’s forgivable. My seafood platter comes as three slices of dill-crusted gravadlax, two delicious oysters, some prawns and langoustines, and a portion of fresh crab. It’s a great gathering of everything delicious under the sea. The rabbit starter is gorgeous, a densely meaty portion of tastiness. The celeriac is served as a remoulade, grated and covered in mayonnaise. My friend and I discover we share a fetish for French supermarket remoulade. This one was good but didn’t have the mustard mayonnaise that makes the Carrefour version so moreish. “Tastes disappointingly home-made,” we whisper guiltily.

Our wine is poured into a glass decanter to let it stretch its legs and breathe a bit, which is a nice touch for a house bottle, usually only seen with a pricier order.

All around us the tables and the seats at the zinc bar have filled with diners. It’s only a Monday night and it’s starting to snow. The côte de boeuf arrives and there is enough meat for four. We ordered it medium and it’s on the pink side of that. Expect to hear mooing with a rare order. The meat is luscious, the blood-red centre is silky and decadent. You can taste the wood-smoke that’s used in the cooking process. It’s a succulent barbecue flavour in deep mid-winter. The only slight disappointment is a bowl of dry and stale-tasting chips, which we don’t eat. Apart from that, it has been a protein-rich feed of good things.

There’s no way we can eat all the beef so a doggy-box is happily provided. The waitress tells us the bones are regularly requested as a take-away for those lucky dogs of Ranelagh.

For dessert, my panna cotta (€6) wobbles voluptuously on its large white plate, smothered in a soup of claret-coloured summer berries. It is light, not too sweet and very tasty, made even more so with sugared shards of toasted almonds. The second dessert, a chocolate caramel mousse (€6) with thick crunchy biscotti, is also served with tangy berries and is great, but way too filling after two heavy courses.

A pot of mint tea (€2.50) and a last glass of that house red (€6.50) finish things off. Then it’s home through the magic of a winter snowstorm, with a comforting foil box of meat in case of emergency. It yields three scrumptious lunches: with rocket for a salad one day, between two slices of toast slathered in honey mustard the next, and finally refried with potato bread and eggs.

A closer look at the cattle diagram logo reveals words in tiny writing on the beast’s head: “I know you only want my body.” It’s true. The Côte de Boeuf is 28-day-aged Irish Aberdeen Angus sourced through Hicks Meats, an arm of the Dún Laoghaire pork butcher. The Donald Russell herd of Black Angus cattle in Longford provides the single rib-eye steaks, which is aged for 21 days. The rest of the meat comes from Kettyle Meats in Fermanagh. This kind of provenance and information about the beef is planned for inclusion on the redesigned menus later this month.

The Butcher Grill is a one-trick pony, but doing one thing extremely well will get you far, even in a hostile climate. Dinner for two with a bottle of house red comes to €115.

Twitter.com/Catherineeats