Ed eats

Chapter One
9, Church Street,
Paceville
Tel. 2138 0000

Food: 8/10
Service: 9/10
Ambience: 9/10
Value: 7/10
Overall: 8/10

I often listen to music while I write. I don’t think this is surprising – after all, music and writing go together like brioche and foie gras (or bread and butter if you are all for the austerity malarkey).

It is, like all first chapters, a journey that promises delights yet to be discovered

Not only does it drown out all external sounds, replacing them with an altogether more pleasing soundtrack to the time spent behind a keyboard, it also helps set a mood.

What normally works for me, and this is entirely personal, is music recorded by jazz quartets and quintets in the late 1950s and early 1960s. By that time musicians had mostly freed themselves from the shackles of having to play ‘hard bop’ or ‘modal jazz’ or whatever it is they’d been doing before this cauldron began to bubble and worked on a fusion of styles that defied definition.

What has all this got to do with restaurants? The word ‘fusion’ sneaking in a paragraph above this one should have been quite a hint. There was a time when fusion was all the rage, so combining a couple of ingredients made any restaurant a fusion restaurant.

Thankfully, we are seeing less of this as even those brandishing the word seem to have tired of it. Now all we need to lose is ‘concepts’.

Chapter One in Paceville is one of those restaurants that I have heard of from the people around me whose opinions about restaurants I happen to respect very highly. It was just the ‘Paceville’ bit that kept putting me off.

Now that there is a lull between all the festive sources of irritation and summer I thought it would be a good time to pick a mid-week night and find out what Chapter One is all about.

The name is intriguing. The chef must have great plans for his future to call a restaurant after the opening part of a novel and yet the humility to acknowledge that this restaurant is the mere start of the story.

Parking was thankfully quite easy and I walked past the restaurant on my first attempt at locating it. The humility goes beyond the restaurant’s name and extends to a very smart yet unassuming exterior.

We’re greeted at the door by the chef patron who, it turns out, is half Japanese and, well, looks the part. His welcoming phrase, asking whether we’d like a table for two, came in flawless Maltese.

I was grateful for his subtle advance notice. Later on in the evening, my better half, who has impeccable tastes where men’s looks are concerned, discretely commented about the chef’s good looks.

Had she assumed that he did not understand Maltese and said this out loud I suspect she’d have been embarrassed.

From the very start, the chef was cordial and friendly without ever overstepping the mark, evidence of the Michelin-starred restaurant experience he is happy to mention on the board outside the restaurant. He quickly explained the specials for the day and gave us some space to discuss the menu.

These are thankfully free of words like ‘fusion’ and ‘concept’, even though this is a place that could possibly do with both had they not been annoying.

The menu is, in fact, a single sheet of printed paper with nothing more than a date on top as an introduction.

Five starters, five main courses and three desserts are enough to introduce me to the style that this kitchen has selected.

Every dish is either a relatively traditional but intriguing one (tagliatelle with fresh lobster) or a traditional dish with a little twist, such as the Aberdeen Angus beef fillet served on top of cannelloni filled with braised beef cheek.

Specials included ribeye and Gurbell. We were both excited by the prospect of fillet with beef cheeks and decided we’d also pick the ribeye offered as a speciality of the day so that any wine we picked wouldn’t clash with one of our mains.

For starters I went with the wild mushroom risotto with parmeggiano and truffle oil both because I love the dish and because I thought it would be a good precursor to the main course.

I had no doubt that the sea bream and prawn carpaccio was going to be chosen regardless of my choice of starters and irrespective of any wine we’d wind up choosing.

The chef offered assistance choosing a wine to go with our main courses and sounded convincingly like he’d actually tried most of them as he guided us towards a 2007 Saint Emilion Grand Cru from Chateau Haut Pezat. This turned out to be quite outgoing, with a balanced medium body and a nose of red cherry and plum. Bring on the fillet.

In no time at all, one of the polite members of serving staff had brought us an amuse bouche of butternut squash soup with a lovely nutmeg scent to it that warmed us up no end. With this we were served very fresh bread and Cheval Franc estate olive oil.

This olive oil is one of those locally grown products that really shines in its ability to more than hold its own with the most celebrated international counterparts, with a gorgeously aromatic and fruity nose full of almonds and a hint of artichoke.

With the fresh bread the oil becomes a treat to the palate with a slightly bitter and really buttery harmony to it. Chapter One does not seem to be a chapter with any half measures in it. They have taken the equivalent of a fine wine and served it with our amuse bouche.

I love this course, punctuating the wait between order and starters with a little treat that tells your palate it is time to yawn, stretch and get ready for serious business. Chefs that get all fancy at this stage ruin the rest of the meal so I loved the creamy simplicity of the soup.

I also love the restaurant itself. There is a Zen-like simplicity to the room, with nothing that stands out or attracts too much attention, warm colours used all around and a little patch of white gravel that adds the final pinch of salt to the subdued aesthetic.

Almost too soon, our starters were at table. The carpaccio, served simply with fennel and aided by a zesty citrus emulsion, was fabulous. To my dismay, there was no way I was getting my hands on more than the obligatory tasting portion and the warning looks to this effect were unambiguous.

My risotto paled in comparison. The rice had been cooked slightly over what I like my carnaroli to be like, and, while the truffle and porcini danced a well-choreographed sequence, there was little in terms of texture to give this dish the final push to excellence. I am being picky but my expectations had been raised by now.

The main courses reflected this dichotomy. The fillet, served on top of two cannelloni stuffed with gorgeous braised beef cheek, was absolutely superb.

The ribeye, while grilled rare as requested, was not a great cut and suffered the consequences. While the flavour was all there, the texture was that of fresh meat, slightly watery and crying out to heaven for a few more days of ageing.

Dessert came in the form of a fine crème brûlée that was packed with vanilla and served with strawberries that, with its fatty goodness, put a perfect end to an enjoyable meal.

We paid €60 per person, a reasonable price for this level of food and service combined with a respectable wine.

And so Chapter One is being written. It is, like all first chapters, a journey that promises delights yet to be discovered and is being written by a very capable author.

If this is anything to go by, I will be happy to give the rest of the book a try as the chef continues to write it.

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