La Réserve Brasserie

Very quaint French brasserie. The escargots are great and the mussels were incredibly tasty! Worth coming back to.

The small and intimate French brasserie is situated on Ranelagh main street — an absolute nightmare for parking. It was a wet and windy night when we braved the outdoors and after a bit of a trek to find parking we were warmly welcomed into the cosy restaurant. It was early evening and we were in time for their great Market Menu deal of 2 courses for € 19.95 or 3 for € 22.95.
Starter options included Smoked chicken and sweet potato gratin, monkfish and endive terrine with ricotta cheese and tomato, or the special for the day which was seared tuna with sundried tomatoes and ratatouille. I love tuna steak so went straight for that — a fabulous fresh and light starter and the ratatouille was a great accompaniment.
Choices for main were Chicken Roulade with shallot and sage cream, Slow baked Salmon with green peas and wasabi purée & Crêpe of baked ham with organic egg, Emmental, baby potato and mushroom. I was so close to ordering the crêpe but decided on the Chicken Roulade — and was delighted with my choice. This was comfort food on a plate, creamy mashed potatoes with veg and delicious soft chicken.
Mam decided on the special of slow cooked rib of beef. I had more than a small bit of envy when I saw her gorgeous meat. Another dish of warm and comforting food, the red wine jus and beef were absolutely fantastic. After foregoing a starter, she decided to go for the small cheese plate for dessert with a glass of wine which finished things off nicely.
The restaurant was pretty quiet during our visit — I can only imagine that the awful weather had put people off as it certainly isn’t the quality of food served in La Réserve. While Ranelagh has many popular dining options I find a lot of them are of the more casual burgers and wings line of food. La Réserve is a welcome break from that with a great Early Bird to take advantage of… give it a try!

I work over in Ranelagh, and was looking for a place to quickly grab some lunch during my break. I’ve been on a health kick lately, and I didn’t want anything deep fried, and I didn’t want sandwiches. I walk past this place ALL the time, but never really noticed it until that day. So I popped on over and read their menu… BAM! They had healthy salads! So I stuck my head in and asked if they did take away. The very french man who was working that day said that unfortunately they do not. There were only two other people in there, and I did have an hour, so I just decided to sit down for my lunch.
I ordered the salad de poulet et sesame. After sitting down, the food was prepared quite quickly and promptly brought out. Not only was the presentation nice, but the food was very tasty as well. This salad was EXACTLY what I was looking for for my lunch. The sesame dressing was lightly drizzled, and not over powering, and it was just enough food to leave me feeling satisfied but not stuffed. AND I was in and out over lunch in about 20 minutes… AND my salad was only 8 euros!
I was very impressed with this place for lunch. I’ll need to go back and try them out for dinner as well. But highly recommend stopping in here over lunch!

I tried this place because I was given a voucher for Christmas… its very French in that it reminded me a lot of being on holidays in France. We went for brunch which is served until 4pm on weekends. We were actually in post lunch time so we went for more substantial mains (actually that bit was unlike France — in France you simply cannot have lunch at 3pm! they won’t let you!)
I went for steak frite and my partner in crime went for the burger. Both came out perfectly seasoned — no salt on the table and none needed. We both went for the lemon meringue pie for dessert and it was good, although the pastry base was a little too think. The rest of the voucher money was spent on booze, and boy was it worth it. We had these gorgeous bellinis made with beautiful champagne.
Service was attentive in the french way — always there but not in your face. It was a really nice boozey lunch!

Ranelagh needs another eatery? Walk down this village any Thursday to Sunday night and its hard to get a seat in most of the spots despite recession. La Reserve is a small place (ish) where Ochos used to be. Service was excellent, very unobtrusive but friendly and unhurried, no sittings or nonsense about making one feel one had to get out fast. Extremely high quality for the price, we had a bottle of wine at house level, proseccos, coffees and water and two three course meals for 110. for the quality of the food this I felt was treat territory, but delicious and excellently presented. It isn’t a Michelin end of market place, but its not priced to be either. The staff went out of their way to make one feel welcome and at ease. The Cidre with a cork in it was new to me and yum. A welcome addition to the strip.

My wife and I were wandering around Ranelagh, looking for something to eat. We were gravitating towards the Butcher’s Grill, because predictably, I wanted a steak. She wasn’t keen on the fish on offer there so we soldiered on, checking out the vast arrays of menus on offer in the village. We settled upon what seemed to be a new French brasserie– La Réserve Brasserie. First impressions were promising — a decent menu, pleasant staff, nice décor, although it is very small and could be seen as cramped. Unfortunately the meal didn’t build upon the initial promise. My wife had a starter of fried calamari, which was average although a bit too greasy. We were given bread also, which was fresh and tasty and came with some olives to pick at, but the dipping oil was vegetable oil (ie not olive oil). My wife enjoyed her haddock main, although it was miniscule, and the accompaniments were lacking in flavour. My rib eye was wafer thin and not cooked rare as requested. I also asked for an alternative to the sauces on offer (pepper or Roquefort), maybe some garlic butter, but this was not entertained. The fries were great though! The wine list was small but the two glasses we got were fine. Desert for my wife was quite bland (an unripe plumb tartlet with ice cream). It wasn’t a great meal in any shape or form, but even taking everything into account above there is some potential here. Hopefully it will get better with time.