Chapter One

Chapter One Review

This wonderful, culture-vulture favorite gets its name from its location, downstairs in the vaulted, stone-wall basement of the Dublin Writers Museum; the natural stone-and-wood setting makes it cozily cavelike. The contemporary French eatery is currently the culinary king of the Northside, thanks to chef-proprietor Ross Lewis's way with such dishes as a feta cheese mousse with organic beetroot essence, pear purée, spiced apple, and pumpkin oil. Yeats himself would have loved the halibut cooked in aromatic oil with fried eggplant and green-olive anchoiade, while Synge probably would have fancied the Dublin version of Proust's madeleine: rich bread-and-butter pudding, a favorite of working-class Irish mothers for generations, here turned into an outrageously filling work of art.