Seasons Restaurant

This place just screams elegance, and fine dining. Their 3-​course meal costs a heft 75 euros, but worth every bit. Their deceivingly small portions are surprisingly filling and delicious. There is a nice and enclosed outside-​seating area that’s also beautiful and pleasant to sip some coffee or have a quick cig.
But back to the service, it’s unreal how good their presentation is, they kept checking in, had all our glasses constantly filled and even came by to subtly wipe away any crumbs on the table. The owner came and introduced himself, and said they rotate through their wait staff every year to properly train a new group.
All in all, best meal ever.

We had a discount voucher to try out here for lunch, and what a culinary experience it was. Service and attention was just excellent in the lush surroundings. Yes, wine by the glass & sparkling water might seem expensive, but the quality was excellent and I had a fantastic Rioja. We had the seafood chowder and smoke salmon for starters, along with a selection of breads with pesto and olive oil dips alongside, mmmm!, the experience was underway.
Then the grilled plaice fillets and pork belly. You could smell the sea freshness of the fillets, really was good, and my wife’s pork belly, the meal that is, was very tender and tasty. These type of dishes sometime give you the impression of not much on the plate, but I must say we were well fed. After dessert and ordering the excellent coffee, to our surprise, my wife was presented a birthday candle with square fours on a slate, having had mentioned that the occasion was her birthday when booking. How nice of them to note that, and present this little extra. Would love to afford to go again sometime.

I am fond of many things in life. Things as diverse as getting free coffee in house of Fraser or standing in queues in the peeing rain making random conversation with those around you. And yet there is something about the Four Seasons that, for me in any case, tops the list of things that I like. I don’t need to talk about the luxury or the décor etc because A: it’s been said before and B: Oh come on its a 5 star hotel its hardly going to be your garden shed now is it?!
I think I like the 4 Seasons because my experiences have always been excellent (apart from ym first one where the service was so slow I felt that should I so wish I would have had the time to grow a full and bushy beard before anything arrived) and thoroughly enjoyable. It is always nice to look through a menu and find a whiskey costs € 250 a pop or to find that rather than just having hot chocolate like everywhere else, they have umpteen varieties and flavours of hot chocolate for you to sample and enjoy. And sample and enjoy I did with much gusto. I know it’s only a small thing but the fact that the hot chocolate comes in a pot with chocolate sweets on the side only adds to the fact that this is a bloody marvellous place!
The staff there are also rather wonderful. I went therebefore after I had been to the RDS to book tickets for the horse show and was told by staff that the place would be bedlam on the day I was to go. However should I want a drink, come on in, ask for the manager and he would ensure I and my friend got a seat. As part of this conversation we also got a mini tour of the place. It was this sort of experience, amongst many others (limo driver offered to bring my friend and I to the nearest bus shelter in his limo because it was raining and we didn’t have an umbrella! Even lent us his umbrella for the night!), that has made me love going to this fine hotel. Should you decide to go, might I recommend getting the sushi as well. Damn finest sushi I ever had! :)

Firstly let me say this is a 3.5 star diner — not the 4 I am giving it but just as with the Harvey Nicholas restaurant I reviewed a couple of days ago (
) a ³⁄₅ would be downright unfair.
Again the big selling point here is the quality of the staff and the service, they are second to none and just what you would expect — you are after all paying for it. However, you are also paying top dollar for a top-​notch meal and that is where the 1.5 /​2 out of 5 disappear.
The food is not quite pedestrian but overall I would say uninspired and definitely the chef is afraid of seasoning.
What we ordered /​tried:
* The seafood chowder which was one of the best I have had in a while, nice and light but lacking somewhere in the middle.
* Fillet steak — great consistency, over done (I ordered med rare, it came medium) but I can live with not coming as ordered but again, it was lacking flavour. The potato purée it came with was spectacular
* My wife had the scallops to start — presentation was great, quality was perfect and rarest of all things — they were cooked perfectly… BUT lacking in seasoning.
The wine-​list is like something from my fantasy cellar packed as it is with a healthy selection of wines I will never be able to afford, however there are a few that won’t break the bank and for a change the house wines are exactly what they should be — wines that have mass appeal that the house is happy to recommend — not the nastiest cheapest crap they can find which is increasingly the opinion in other establishments.
In all we left replete but disappointed, there is so much promise, so much done right, they come so close to the mark but miss it so often it is just frustrating.