3 South Anne Street, Dublin 2, Ireland.

Heard tell a chef from the now defunct Mermaid had taken over as head chef in this cosy little venue so we dropped in to give it a spin.

We sat outside under a heater and only needed the heavy blankets provided towards the end of the night. I took a moment to nose around inside and found the place to be nicely decorated. It would be easy to return here with a larger party for an inside meal.

The staff were friendly and helpful.

Between the specials and the menu it was genuinely hard to decide what starter to go for. In the end, sharing we decided to go for the chicken wings and the bruschetta. The waiter advised us to for the large portion of chicken wings.

The large portion of chicken wings turned out to be a small mountain of wings. The wings have this moreish quality that forces you to keep eating them even when you’ve hit the wall. I much prefer these wings to the vinegar overload of the ones from Elephant and Castle (Temple Bar restaurant in Dublin famous for its chicken wings – Editor) .

The bruschetta was refreshing as it had a real rustic quality to it. They didn’t skimp on the ham, the mozzarella was sliced thick, the bread was also thick slice and as we found out home made to the restaurant. My companion was quite taken with the bruschetta and in particular the bread. Though thick bread was light and reminded her of home made bread from her childhood which is a great thing to be able to say about anywhere.

For mains, we had the steak fajita and the chicken and wild mushroom risotto.

The steak fajita was gorgeous – the again made in the restaurant tortillas were awesome. It was nearly impossible to stop loading them with some truly fantastic guacamole.

The Chicken and wild mushroom risotto was declared as amazing and my stuffed companion had to take what she couldn’t finish home. Declaring it, reheated in work, the best lunch ever.

For desert we shared the chocolate brownie.

As we sat drinking and relaxing afterward there was no pressure for us to hurry up even though the restaurant was clearly beginning to shut down. This is something I cannot stress enough as being important, at least to me. A relaxed attitude to finished digesting diners is pivotal to me. Though I do understand in a busy restaurant during a busy time, this is hard.

We found ourselves talking to the head chef who had decided to take his dinner outside and we were told about just some of the things he had planned, the in-house ice-creams he described sounded amazing.

I will definitely be back.