Aoife Cox enjoys the bitterness and booziness in Stephen McArdle’s The Arch Bistro
From the outside, with its whitewashed walls and thatched roof, you might reasonably expect the food to be all bacon and cabbagey, but one glance at the menu, with its foie gras and chicken liver parfait and fillet of beef bourgignonne, and you'll see that The Arch Bistro - which nestles over the Glenside pub in Churchtown - is, perhaps, a little more French in style than anything. You'll find plenty of Irish ingredients name-checked on the menu, though - Fermanagh pork belly, Castletownbere crab, Fivemiletown goat's cheese - and the service is of the warm and welcoming kind for which, rumour has it, we Irish are famous.
Stephen McArdle's food, too, has much to recommend it. Served as a foil to the rich chicken liver parfait was a very fine plum chutney, all sweetness and zing. There was a lot to like about a prettily presented trio of seafood: mini-medallions of salmon pastrami alongside artful blobs of avocado purée; a mix of sweet crabmeat and apple crème fraîche to top some Guinness soda bread; a scallop ceviche that was pretty in pink grapefruit though, in truth, rather overwhelmed by it. The platter also included tiny florets of cauliflower that were pickled and spiced and all things nice (even if - as sometimes happens with a busy plate - I was altogether unsure of what they were intended to accompany).
There were elements of other dishes, too, that did not, perhaps, quite hit the mark: the apricot-stuffed slow roast pork belly was much enjoyed, though less so the citrus-marinated fennel to accompany it; fish and chips - with a light tempura batter coating the cod and chunky chips that were creamy, not crispy - came with a swirl of minted pea purée (of which I wanted more) and a mango salsa that really needed to deliver more piquancy and interest than it did.
Desserts-wise, while bitter and boozy may not be the most desirable qualities in, say, a life partner, they are positively irresistible when applied to chocolate, and the bitter chocolate mousse with boozy oranges was a pleasure, even if the oranges used didn't, in the end, add greatly to the whole. An iced raspberry soufflé with mixed berry compote, meanwhile, was tang all the way, lacking only a touch of something creamy to balance and soften.
After all of that (and I did have help, you understand) I left thinking that The Arch would be the kind of place that you'd be happy to have in your neighbourhood, and I daresay that would be the opinion of the very satisfied-seeming locals who were dining when we were there. It's a restaurant with good, and sometimes very good, food wrapped in good service, and certainly - if you avail of their set menu or early bird options - it's good value too, so why wouldn't they be happy?
The Arch Bistro, Landscape Road, Churchtown, D145 01 296 6340 www.thearchbistro.com
