It really brings the fiver cappuccino claim under serious doubt
It’s 5e for a cappucino if youre in the front row at the panto, i know that.
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Oh no it isn’t
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The lad who runs this must have done something to seriously piss off the critic set.
It’s really hard to know what to make of it. Here’s another review published today 
Lucinda is a spiteful bitch if restaurants are unwilling to pony up for her ‘merch’.
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she was turned away the first 2 times she went there, so she sharpened her quill
fixed
All the reviews on google are excellent then.
Strange one
Flâneur restaurant review: ‘Credit is due for spotting the French bis…
Oh dear, oh dear. Where to begin to describe our experience at Flâneur, a new restaurant from the same hospitality stable as the successful Sprezzatura, which doesn’t seem to know its cul from its coude? Perhaps with the website, the first port of call for most customers. Currently, this offers no indication as to the food or drink available (the full website, it says, is coming soon). I reckon there must be a menu on Instagram, so that’s where I head next. Nope. Nothing there either.
Despite this lack of information, Flâneur is very booked up. I ask my friend to do the necessary, and she comes back with the news that the only table she can have on a Wednesday a week hence is at either 5.30pm or 9.30pm. Curiouser and curiouser. Flâneur must be really good, I reckon, one of those ‘hidden gems’ we keep hearing about. Obviously the savvy residents of Rathmines have discovered something special and are determined to keep it to themselves. Would that this were the case.
I arrive a few minutes before my pal, and have plenty of time to study the menu inscribed on the blackboards hanging from the ceiling. It falls into classic French bistro territory, and looks promising, which is more than can be said for the interior, which can be charitably described as an aesthetic mess.
Steak tartare
After my Parisienne friend arrives (“Nothing about this place says French bistro to me,” says she, looking around with an expression of barely concealed hauteur, “and I can’t smell any garlic.”), our waitress tells us the actual menu features only some of the dishes on the boards, and that we need to scan the QR code on the table for that day’s offering.
So it’s adieu to the escargots from Cavan, duck rillettes and oxtail bourguignon, and au revoir to aligot and pithivier of Skeaghanore duck. Instead, we order the scallop gratin and steak tartare, with an extra starter of marrow bones (always hard to resist) for good measure. The hand-chopped meat in the tartare is of good quality and dressed just enough but not so assertively as to overpower the beef. The scallops (three for €14.95), on the other hand, are woefully overcooked and there are no breadcrumbs nor any evidence of any gratinating; the very liquid sauce in which they swim, though split, is tasty.
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Marrow bones with sourdough
I expect the marrow bones to be split lengthwise into canoes, seasoned and garnished, hopefully Fergus Henderson style, but instead they come to the table as two enormous tranches, accompanied by big hunks of Tartine sourdough. The implements with which to extract the marrow arrive several minutes later.
And the starters are better than the main courses.
It’s hard to conceive of a dish more decadently luxurious than tournedos Rossini, said to have been dreamed up by French master chef Marie-Antoine Carême and the composer Gioachino Rossini in the kitchen of the House of Rothschild in Paris. The original features foie gras AND fresh truffle, in a sauce featuring port, brandy AND Madeira.
Flâneur’s version is a serious disappointment, in that it features no truffle. And while the fillet and the rich sauce in which it sits are good, the foie gras, a circle cut from a much longer piece (our server tells us it comes from an ethical source but is hazy on detail) has been breaded and egregiously deep-fried. It’s quite horrid and we leave most of it behind.
Scallop gratin
Our other main course is a rotisserie half chicken. The chicken is a proper free-range bird from Ring’s Farm in Co Kilkenny, but has had the joy sucked out of it and been bored senseless by whatever has happened to it in the kitchen. Pommes frites are fine, neither poor nor particularly good, while the dressing on our green salad is, says she who is the authority on such matters, a crime against vinaigrette. Flâneur does not serve cheese — pourquoi? — and we finish with an inoffensive crème brûlée.
With four glasses of a decent chilled Beaujolais (€8.95 each) from a selection on tap, the bill comes to €127.35, expensive given the standard of the food and charm-free service. The default tip option starts at 15pc and rises in 5pc increments. I grudgingly add 10pc. Whatever the good intentions behind Flâneur — and credit is due for using decent suppliers, as well as for spotting the French bistro-shaped gap in the Dublin market — something has gone terribly wrong along the road from idea to realisation.
Budget
You could have Jane Russell’s Toulouse-style sausages and pommes frites for €10.90.
Blowout
Scallops gratin, tournedos Rossini, sides and dessert will cost over €110 for two.
The rating
5/10 food
5/10 ambience
5/10 value
15/30
Flâneur, 223 Rathmines Road Lower, Dublin 6, flaneur.ie
Even when hes delivering a bad review jay always does it with panache and style, except for le cinq.
Paolo tulio was the same. Lucinda just appears a vindictive hack beside them
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I find it mediocre, but others love it. Top price for decent steak and wine. And I mean top price. It works here because the beef is above average for here. Ireland has much better beef by and large anyway. It’ll be grand in Dublin. The two were made for each other. It’s not complete extortion, but I’d be surprised if you can’t find better cheaper elsewhere in town. It’s fairly reliable though, and high volume, so it’ll suit many.
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Cheers bucko
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As always, that’s just my opinion. It’s not a destination restaurant, but the prices edge in that direction. It’s good but not great, if you see what I mean. If I was asked out there I may or may not go based on the restaurant itself. It is nice and anonymous and I’ve always enjoyed it, but forgot about it after.
It’s no greenhouse, put it that way, but no McDonalds either.
I ate in one in London before. Like a upmarket Marco Pierre Whites if I recall.
They did have a super Ginger and Ale cocktail which hit the spot after a rake of pints that day.
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I ate in the one in Manchester. Enjoyed it.
It’ll clean up with the bidniz expenses diners.
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Is that still a thing?