Restaurant Review - Table 6
Tuesday 21 October 2014
The 1970s sprang to mind when we first saw the in-your-face purple and lime colour scheme adorning the new Table 6 Restaurant in a first-floor premises in the centre of Templeogue village. Procul Harum's A Whiter Shade of Pale it was not! This premises used to house a fairly long-standing Italian eatery called Paparazzi. With the telephone number unchanged and the new restaurant being described as modern 'European Mediterranean', I wondered if it was 'a revamp and relaunch' being run by the same people, and so I asked the waitress. She told us it had no connection with the previous restaurant, that a consortium owned it, there was a manager in place, and that their chef had worked in a hotel in town.
The a la carte menu offered a half-dozen starters (€6-€9.50) including chicken wings, a seafood plate, and poached duck egg, leaves, pickled radish, baby carrots and apple-ginger dressing.
An early-bird menu of 2/3 courses at €21/€24, comprising dishes from the main menu, seemed attractive and Brendan decided to try this. His choice of poached pear (€7 on main menu) was presented on a slate in the current deconstructed-Lego style of smears, dollops, cubes and wafers. A half pear dominated the dish, while small blobs of goats cheese mousse held beetroot crisps. A 'chorus-line' quartet of smallish seared scallops (€8.50) for me had each mollusc anchored in salsa verde mayonnaise, topped with crispy pancetta, dotted with pickled cauliflower, broccoli florets and micro-leaves. All good.
Mains (€13.50-€27) included steaks; tagliatelle; pan-fried seabass fillet and slow-braised lamb Bourguignon with tzatziki sauce and mash. From his early-bird menu, Brendan chose corn-fed chicken supreme (€16.50 on main menu), which proved a chunky chicken breast atop a large over-crisped polenta pillow, sitting in a ratatouille vegetable melange, finished with a Parmesan foam.
It was certainly substantial, but perhaps a tad overly rustic, with the dry polenta difficult to eat. Roasted quail with bacon and wild mushroom stuffing, carrot puree, enoki mushrooms and rosemary jus at €18.50, somehow conveyed to me that I could expect a stuffed roasted bird on my plate, but it was much more like a mushroom stew, tasty if very salty, incorporating tiny quail joints, all resting on a carrot puree 'wheel' and topped with cress. Sides were €3.50 extra; we didn't have any but you would probably need something with the quail.
Passion-fruit curd, mini pavlovas and raspberry sorbet (€6 on main menu) for Brendan was again a colourful deconstructed number, which looked and tasted lovely, while a selection of cheese (€8), on a board with a little kilner jar of home-made chutney and toasted bread, was also excellent. With all of this, we had the cheapest bottle of wine on the list, a citrusy Orquestra Sauvignon Blanc 2013 at €20. We also had their own filtered water which they charge at €1.50 per person.
On checking the bill, they had charged Brendan for a 3-course early-bird menu at €24, plus separately for a dessert at €6, which they adjusted on pointing it out, making the bill €82.
I asked the waiter who presented the bill if I would be able put the service charge on the credit card and I was told he couldn't do that, and that the staff wouldn't get it if it went on the card.
I asked to see the manager, who said their credit card machine didn't accept service charge. I asked then could he not just add €8 to the bill, as they do in many restaurants, and give it to the staff. After a conversation as to credit card machines and gratuities for staff, he finally added the €8 extra to the bill and charged it to the credit card.
I didn't exactly leave with a smile on my face.
Table 6,
Old River House
Templeogue Road,
Templeogue,
Dublin 6W.
Tel: (01) 490-5628
tablesix.ie
lucindaosullivan.com
First published in Life Mag in The Sunday Independent