Fancy French Food and Dangerously Drinkable Cocktails

Casual dining has become so huge in Dublin that I haven't eaten in a proper fancy restaurant in ages that actually serves you wine in a nice wine glass and gives you proper napkins rather than kitchen paper. My sister was up visiting me recently and we decided to go somewhere nice before heading to a play in town, and this place definitely hit the spot.

Pichet has been around for 5 years and despite me wanting to visit it for ages I'm always pulled away by the lure of casual dining. We wanted to go somewhere nice but weren't too flush with cash so we were pretty happy to see that Pichet did an early bird three course menu for €25. We were planning on getting a nice bottle of red to sip away on but then saw that they did a cocktail called Pichet 75 which was a glass of Prosecco with a dash of Bombay Sapphire gin and fresh lemon juice. We decided to ditch the wine and start on the first of many cocktails that night. They were so refreshing and delicious! So much so that we had sank them before we finished our first course. The atmosphere in there was great and despite us arriving at 6pm the whole place was almost full already and buzzing with chatter.

For starters I decided to go with the salt cod beignets which were like little deep fried cod croquettes. They were delicious, as was the avocado cream that went with them. They were the perfect size as well, the portions in Pichet are good- they're not huge so you don't leave with that bloated feeling you get in lots of restaurants but you're still nicely satisfied. After those little fried balls of heaven I was ready for my main course.

I decided to go for the salmon, mainly because I always go for the fish option in restaurants. The waiter said it would be served slightly pink, to be honest I have never had salmon anything less than well done so was a bit worried I wouldn't like it but it was really good. It was really tender and the sauce and roasted beetroot that came with it were delicious. We of course got another round of cocktails and again drank them way too quickly!

Despite deciding that I definitely was not having dessert and was going to be super healthy, I of course ordered dessert. I naturally gravitate towards anything with chocolate in it, so I went for their chocolate mousse. It was really good and came with gorgeous crispy, almost savoury chocolate biscuits. The only thing I wasn't sure on was the roasted pine nuts sprinkled on top. They weren't bad, but a little random. My sister ordered the cream cheese mousse and berry sorbet which was even nicer so I stole a few spoons of that on the sly.

Despite deciding that we were on a budget for the night we actually ended up spending more on drinks in Pichet than the bloody food with the Pichet 75's starting us off on what would become a cocktail crawl of Dublin! I really enjoyed everything in Pichet and was only sorry I left it so long to visit it in the first place.