Cliff Townhouse

JD and I had wanted to visit the Cliff House Hotel during the Christmas holliers but did not manage to as the hotel was fully booked by the time we decided to try and make a reservation :(

It wasn't until after the New Year that I found out that the people behind the Cliff House hotel also have premises in the capital called the Cliff Townhouse. Its conveniently located on Stephens Green and is a bar/restaurant with a small number of guestrooms in the same building. We did have an ulterior motive for visiting the resto so managed to bag a reservation for Saturday dinner :)

The welcome at the door was warm and professional, with staff to take our coats and then lead us to the table. The dining room is lovely with high ceilings and elegant table settings so first impressions were very good. However, it all started to go downhill when our waiter came to take our order. The individual in question looked like he was a more senior member of staff as he was wearing a suit (and others were wearing aprons) yet he failed to ask the most basic of questions during our order. I had to ask for side dishes which he did not offer and later, I had to ask JD if he wanted a drink because our waiter did not bother asking him, pretty poor!

The food was OK although my whole sea bream was undercooked. No-one came to ask if our food was alright and I did not actually find out that the fish was undercooked in the centre until half-way through my meal. I did not wish to make a fuss, however, I did point it out to our server when he came to take our plates away. In fairness to the resto, a member of staff (presumably the maitre d') did come over and apologise which was fine (they subsequently comped one of our desserts). Service from desserts onwards was  restored. It was a mixed night, I did ring the resto the following week regarding my "ulterior motive" which they promised to send me some information via email. However, this has yet to arrive so the combination of this delay plus a so-so dinner means that I will not be considering or visiting it again, a real shame....

Dressed crab, avocado and Marie Rose sauce - nice crab but sauce was a little overpowering

Whole seabream with roasted vegetables - generous size of fish and fresh. Let down by being undercooked.

Vanilla ice cream and rhubarb jelly - tasty, especially with the crunchy oat topping but rhubarb jelly did not have much flavour and was too hard