Reviews

There are things that remain ultimately unknowable. I'm not thinking here about deep philosophical constructs, but something a little more mundane. I'm wondering what are the criteria that make a restaurant a success. Just like in the movie business there are no hard and fast rules; you can get a great location, a good chef, a careful menu, competitive prices - and the enterprise fails. There are imponderables that cannot be quantified, there's an element of magic to what makes a dining room feel like a good place to be in.

I mention this because there are dining rooms in Dublin that change, chameleon-like with some regularity. What tends to happen is that an optimist moves into a failing restaurant, injects a large amount of energy and enthusiasm, and hopes to change history. 'Town' is a case in point. Its underneath Mitchels Wine Merchants in Kildare Street, a space that in my reviewing years has been 'Mitchels', 'Brunos' and now 'Town'. It's an old adage in the restaurant business that getting people to go either up or downstairs to dine is difficult. It seems that diners prefer dining at ground level, so to get them to confront stairs means that the restaurant has to offer something that makes the effort worthwhile.

The space that 'Town' occupies is long and thin, a shape that makes the task of the designer a hard one. What has changed in this new incarnation is that the tunnel effect has been cleverly minimised by thoughtful design and layout. The colour scheme too is pleasing, plain blocks of neutral colour, like fashionable mushroom, and simple but effective lighting. Despite having increased the number of available seats, there's no sense of crowding, the tables are far enough from one another for comfort and privacy.