The Chophouse: A buzzy night out in Dublin 4

Serious about food, but casual about service – and what's with the D4 chutney, writes CATHERINE CLEARY

THERE’S A YELLOW-COVERED cookbook high up on a shelf in the dining area of The Chophouse on Dublin’s Shelbourne Road. It’s so high up you could only thumb through it with the aid of a ladder. It’s David Chang’s Momofuku cookbook, a nod for those who know that food is taken seriously here. Chang is the New York chef who sells Korean street food for Wall Street prices. The Chophouse also has an Uncle Sam “We want you” sign calling on anyone who grows their own fruit and vegetables to offer them to the kitchen.

This place could easily be called The Roadhouse as it’s on the intersection of five incessantly-busy roads, and if you haven’t been before, it’s difficult to spot the low-key name on the front. But as the night goes on, I get the impression that we are one of the few groups who aren’t regulars.

My mum and her friend have arrived by the time I make it and have been given the hot seats, literally – a timber bench with a toasty waft coming up through the boards from beneath. I had booked a table by phone the evening before. No one has a record of it, but it’s early so there’s a table free.

Cushions, candles, painted tables and lots of painted timber make this a cosy place, although there’s a blow heater at my feet that seems to have been used earlier and then forgotten. It’s busy and noisy and it’s hard to make out who’s working here and who isn’t. There seems to be a no-uniform policy with the wait staff. So a man in golf club chinos and a jumper serves us. He looks and sounds so much like the actor Simon Delaney that I have to peer through the candlelight to make sure it’s not Delaney himself putting in some method work for a part in the RTÉ drama, Raw. (Fiona’s long-lost brother come back to run the restaurant while she has her gap year in Australia with her farmer friend maybe?). Later, a man in a 1970s Elvis suit heads upstairs to a party after popping his quiff into the kitchen to say hello. There’s that kind of laid-back casual feel to the place.

The next thing that will strike a new arrival to The Chophouse is that the food is not cheap. Most main courses cost more than €25. There’s an €11 cheese plate with something called “D4 chutney” on it. D4 chutney turns out to be a fig jam, a bit like the innards of a fig roll. Perhaps the figs have come from the orangeries of Donnybrook, otherwise the D4-ness of it is confined to the price.

There’s a goat’s cheese parfait with smoked beetroot starter, which is very good – not a huge portion but small concentrated flavours. The beetroot cubes had been drenched in a good balsamic and the cheese mixture comes on tasty toasts. Three mains are also pretty flawless. I get the fish special, a pan-fried brill with vanilla “crushed” potatoes. The fish has been fried in butter and then drenched in a luscious lemon butter, so it comes swimming to the table with some seriously delicious brown shrimp alongside.

The golden pool of butter has a few chopped chives and a lovely lemony kick and the vanilla works with the potatoes, thanks to the citrus sharpness. Mum’s rib-eye is perfect, juicy and full of flavour, served with a super-sweet tangle of onions on top and a hot pepper sauce with a kick like a mule on the side. Excellent skin-on chips come in a miniature silver champagne bucket. Beryl has a fish platter of fluffy and crisp tempura cod, smoked mackerel, deep-fried haddock cakes and a couple of quenelles of crab and herb mayo. “Absolutely delicious,” she says. The swoon of the evening goes to the chocolate fondant dessert, a generous pot of silken chocolate decadence like a sauce that’s been slowly thickened to spoon-sticking thickness. It’s served warm with good ice cream. My cheese plate with the D4 chutney has Kilree goats’ cheese, Bellingham Blue, Hegarty Cheddar and a French brie. It’s the first time I’ve seen Kilree, Helen Finnegan’s award-winning cheese, on a restaurant cheese board, and it’s as sensational as a cheese that beat off nearly 900 other offerings in the British cheese awards last year can be.

So they’re serious about food and casual about service here, which works to a point. It stops working when we’re repeatedly addressed as “girls” (all that’s missing is the adjective “golden”) and my milk and sugar but no coffee arrives. By then, the place is hopping and it’s time to hit the road.

Dinner for three with two glasses of house wine came to €114.50.

[ Twitter.com/catherineeats ]

The chophouse

2 Shelbourne Road, Dublin 4,

tel: 01-6602390

Facilities: Upstairs, and fine

Music: Pub rock drowned out by the crowd

Food provenance: Good. Cheesemakers on the board, other suppliers on the website

Wheelchair access: Yes

THE POWER OF SOUP: from Liston's

When most of your eating is being done from a tray with its own beanbag on the bottom to prevent wobbles, it sets a new bar for food that works. Losing your voice to flu is one thing, losing your appetite entirely is another. My first "yum" for days came recently after a warm comforting spoon of butternut squash soup from Liston's on Camden Street in Dublin. A simply-made version with no fancy spicing or swirls of anything too rich, it was perfect to coax back the urge to eat. A tomato and bean version followed the next day. These soups aren't cheap, €3.15 for a single portion carton, and the frequently lengthy lunchtime queue is not for the time-pressed. But it made me feel a little less sorry for myself, which was a relief to all, not least the man who patiently queued, reheated and carried them by tray to the world's crankiest patient.

Liston's, 25/26 Lower Camden Street, Dublin 2