The All-New Locks

Locks was the subject of gushing reviews in this magazine until last July, when Helen Lucy Burke had a grim experience. Troy Maguire has long been feted in these pages. In March 2006, a few months before our readers voted L’Gueuleton as their favourite restaurant in the city, we put him on the cover. Fast-forward 15 months. How does Maguire fare in the all-new Locks? Trevor White investigates.

Is the restaurant scene coming of age? Each season, it seems, a young chef arrives with bold new ideas, experience of working in Michelin-starred powerhouses and a determination to redraw the culinary map of Dublin.

Until last month, the chef of the moment was Dylan McGrath, who returned to Ireland after a stint at Tom Aikens in London. McGrath was widely lauded for his work in Mint – here, first, and then in the national broadsheets. Prior to McGrath’s return, the chef in question had been Troy Maguire, who made L’Gueuleton the most talked about restaurant in the country. (Back in the late 1990s Maguire and McGrath worked together in the Commons, and they remain friendly.)

Maguire has moved on from L’Gueuleton. His new venture, the born-again Locks, still features simple French bistro food – it will be familiar to anyone who has eaten in L’Gueuleton – although some of the ingredients are, in the words of Maguire, “slightly more extravagant.” The menu features wild mushrooms, truffles, turbot and prawns. Call it bistro-luxe.

The Dubliner was among the first champions of Maguire. We put him on the cover of this magazine in March 2006; our readers later voted it as their favourite restaurant in the city. This time round we were beaten to the post by one of our own. Eoin Higgins, the deputy editor of this magazine, wrote a cracking piece for the Sunday Tribune about the new Locks… before it even opened. Higgins, a close friend of Troy Maguire, spent a day in the kitchen as chef prepared to unveil his bold, defiantly contemporary re-working of the prettiest – and oldest – restaurant on the Grand Canal.

Mindful of the fact that the new Locks had already been hyped elsewhere, I turned up for dinner on Friday, May 25th: day two. While it is not especially kind to subject a new restaurant to a full review so soon after opening, it is also true that diners were asked to pay full price. And in letting the Tribune into his kitchen, Maguire had already signalled his own happiness to meet the press.

The downstairs dining room is lighter, brighter and a little more austere than it was in the days of the old Locks. White linen, off-white walls, hip lamps, tea candles and a hard wood floor contribute to a somewhat understated ambience. It feels less colonial than it was just a few months ago; more like a waterside dining room in Cape Cod or the Hamptons than a genteel refuge from the present.

Gone, too, are the handful of veteran waiters who trained together in the old Russell Hotel, long before Troy Maguire was born. They have been replaced by a young and mostly impressive team; familiar faces from places like La Stampa, Bang and the Winding Stair. (Maguire has brought three or four staff over from L’Gueleuton.) The front of house team is led by Kelvin Rynhart and Teresa Carr, a dynamic couple who bought the lease in partnership with Troy Maguire.

The acoustics are bad. That hard wood floor demands the addition of more soft furnishings in order to soak up the noise. And the sound problem is exacerbated by music that becomes unnecessary and intrusive as the dining room fills up. To be fair, it must also be said that Locks feels more fashionable than ever. Stylish, good-looking people walked in off the street all night, demanding a seat at the bar, a table tomorrow, a quick gawk. There is a palpable buzz about the place, and quibbles about the noise levels are made in the context of respect: this is dinner as theatre. (When I complained about the acoustics to Troy Maguire, he compared dining in Mint to sitting an exam. It’s a fair point: eating should not be a solemn experience.)

The menu is physically elegant (graphic designer Alison Jones was one of the first designers of this magazine) and it is full of wit and invention – or, as an elder member of our party put it, downright peculiar combinations. The most popular starters at our table of seven were a plate of baked sheep’s cheese with truffled honey, potato, watercress and Iberico ham (€14.50) and the Dublin Bay prawns with pigeon biscuit, cep, celeriac and roquette (€16.90). Pigeon biscuit? “It’s spelled the same as biscuit,” says Maguire, “but it’s pronounced bis-kwee. It’s like a savoury custard, and it’s made with foie gras, pigeon and a pigeon stock. Like a parfait, then, but with thickened stock as well.” Some of the portions are comically huge: the hors d’oeuvres plate could, for €15.50, serve as a grand lunch, while a black pudding and apple tart tatin (€13) was surely conceived for Homer Simpson.

For mains, two of our party had a pork loin with black bacon and morel boudin, confit cabbage and borlotti beans (€23). My saddle of lamb with sardalaise potato, green olive, celery and orange gremolata (€26.90) was better, perhaps, on the menu than the plate, but technically, at least, it was perfect. The star of the evening was a strangely conventional rib-eye with béarnaise.

Puddings were given little room to shine, as no one had much inclination to eat more. The portions will hardly remain this big. And they will probably need to do something about the acoustics. But these are modest reservations. If McGrath was last year’s Maguire, this year’s McGrath is Maguire. In Mint and Locks the two chefs serve much the same market, and there is already talk of a rivalry. More good news for the rest of us.

Locks, 1 Windsor Terrace, Dublin 8, 454 3391