In the late 1980s I spent some years in the Middle East editing hotel and club magazines. I discovered a secret hack that improved my work-life balance – I’d tap the phrase “timeless elegance” into my Amstrad, and the final copy would be signed off in a heartbeat.
As I scan the “Fine Dining” menu in the newly minted Foxy Lounge restaurant, I’m slapped by the thud of a Joan Collins-grade shoulder pad: “Elegance in Shell”, “Carpaccio di Rossa Elegance”, “Venus Desire Pearls”, “Quattro Formaggi Elegance”, and a sprinkling of “Tuscan Essence” and “Verdant Elixirs”. Who, I wonder, is this creative genius who would have put me out of a job back in the day? Or did I miss that episode of The Apprentice where the brief was for The Real Housewives of Dubai to launch their own Michelin-star culinary dream?
Foxy Lounge, wedged between a Circle K garage and The Defenders 4×4 dealership on a side road in Donnybrook, opened quietly with a glitzy Instagram account on August 22nd. It is businesswoman Eva Liang Tang’s first foray into the hospitality industry. Her business partner, executive head chef Thomas Cimek, has worked in Avoca, Donnybrook Fair and Compass Group Ireland, and owned an Italian restaurant in South Korea before that.
The Venus desire pearls – snail caviar with white truffle, 24-carat gold, black fungus and violet sauce – beckon like a sea siren, but at €110, I wonder if the snails jetted in first class on Emirates. I’m certain no amount of “timeless elegance” will get them past the Irish Times financial gatekeepers. So “elegance in shell” (€16) it will have to be.
I love oysters – briny, fresh, and delicate. But these? Four steamed lumps, swollen like they have spent too long in a sauna. Not even a hit of crimson essence (fiery red pepper dip) or a splash of verdant elixir (chimichurri) could save them.
The antipasti di Lusso (€40) promises a “luxury selection” of meats, cheese and grissini, or, more accurately, a lazy assembly of cliches on a wooden board. The grissini are wrapped in Parma ham, there are cubes of dull cheese, mozzarella, semi-dried tomatoes, artichokes and a sad little dish of petrified prawns.
The crab royale pasta (€43) arrives, with fettuccine spilling out of the crab’s shell like a grotesque seafood piñata. Cimek drowns it in hot garlic butter tableside, creating an oil slick that would make Circle K blush. The house-made fettuccine is thick enough to give your jaw a workout, scattered with barely-there pieces of crab. I ask for a shell cracker to get at the meat in the lone claw, they kindly crack it in the kitchen, tripling the amount of crab on my plate instantly.
Our other main course is the “quattro formaggi elegance” (€28). The 72-hour fermented base is as rigid as a plate and an uncooked mozzarella ball has been plonked in the centre after it was released from the electric oven. It is ceremoniously sliced open at the table, but doesn’t distract from the fact that the rest of the pizza has almost no cheese on it.
After all this, I brace myself for dessert. But the “velvet tiramisu” (€12) is enjoyable. It has layers of espresso-soaked ladyfingers, mascarpone and a healthy dusting of cocoa powder sieved over a fork-shaped stencil, leaving an imprint on either side of the plate.
Turning to the decor. Gold isn’t just on the menu. There are gold lamps, gold ice buckets with stags’ heads, gold cutlery and a teaspoon crowned with a fake plastic diamond (pilfered perhaps from Barbie’s Dreamhouse). The purple walls are flecked with gold like a unicorn sneezed glitter everywhere.
Tang is in the restaurant the evening we visit (there are two other occupied tables), and is as charming as a host could be. I try desperately to resolve the fact that she is one of the people behind this experiment in how much gold you can throw at a plate before people start to question what’s underneath. Tuscan grandmothers would be sobbing into their floury aprons.
I get that times are tough for restaurants, but punters aren’t swimming in spare cash either. €110 for snail caviar? No amount of “verdant elixir” is going to make that pill easier to swallow. Of course every new restaurant can have an off day, but when presenting pasta and pizza at these punchy prices there’s little excuse to get it wrong. I left Foxy Lounge baffled that a restaurant can so utterly miss the mark on simple Italian staples – though the tiramisu, at least, was a sweet relief.
Dinner for two with a bottle of wine was €173.
The verdict A royale catastrophe wrapped in gold leaf.
Food provenance Crab from Loughshinny Harbour, chicken from Musgrave, Irish free-range or from Poland, depending on the supply, Italicatessen.
Vegetarian options Foxy pasta, Margherita supreme, quattro formaggi elegance, garden harvest, sea moss salad, and vibrant greens.
Wheelchair access Accessible room with no accessible toilet.
Music Louder than the decor, Volare and Que Sara at full blast.
