Fired-up cooking
We visit one of Dublin’s hottest restaurants: Fire
WORDS | ALEX RAYNER
IT CAN BE HARD TO MARRY TRADITION WITH MODERN DESIGN IDEAS AND PERSONABLE SERVICE, yet Dublin’s Fire restaurant carries it all off with a flourish.
Located in Mansion House, the Lord Mayor’s official residence, Fire’s refectory once served as the Mayor’s supper room. Built in 1891, the place has also been an arts venue – they used to hold Irish dancing competitions here before it was turned over to Fire in 2005.
Rather than bow to the Victorian hall’s decorative heritage, Fire has been furnished with tall steel cones and floor-to-ceiling drapes, accentuating the room’s height and also conjuring the kind of mise-en-scène that wouldn’t look out of place on a surrealist Jean Cocteau set.
Its slogan – ‘simple food, well done’ – might sound hackneyed, but head chef Darina Brennan insists on sourcing locally. Steaks are Irish Hereford Beef and the goats that produce the milk that goes into the cheese bruschetta are grazed on a family-run farm in Ardsallagh, County Cork. Starters are priced from €9.95 and mains from €15.95.
The restaurant has a wood-burning stove in one of the steel cones on which many of the dishes are cooked. Elsewhere this might look like showy, yet here it is just one means by which Fire has managed to stay hot.
Fire, The Mansion House, Dawson Street, Dublin, +353 (0)1 676 7200, www.mansionhouse.ie
