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GASTRO WORDS Conor Stevens PHOTOS Killian Broderi
ck Everyone’s a Critic Osteria Lucio “The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.” – Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband (Act II) I have a friend who has (for many years now) cultivated a habit of visiting restaurants soon after I’ve reviewed them (positively) so that he can subsequently recount in grave detail how awful his experience of the place was. Every time. Without exception dishes are either ‘sent back’ or taken home ‘for the dogs’. If the guy didn’t have bad (dining) luck he’d have no luck at all. I don’t take the provocation personally because I understand that these episodes are actually emotionally inarticulate attempts on his part to draw closer to me. He’s the awkward boy pulling the pretty girl’s hair in the playground. (I’m the pretty girl in this). My equanimity springs also from the deeply held contention that criticism is always more concerned with interpretation than judgement. I’m not a cheerleader, I call the game as I see it. I don’t approach these pieces as if compiling a guide. There would be far fewer opportunities for the kinds of excursus that I indulge in. Not considering myself to be in the recommendation business doesn’t mean that I’m not on the receiving end though - Osteria Lucio is some advice that I’ve passed on for too long it seems. The situation of the restaurant could be the reason, it seems almost wilfully obscure, pulling off the trick of seeming simultaneously nearby and quite out of the way. It takes, I imagine a particular type to open under a railway arch on a dead-end street with virtually no footfall. Chef-patron Ross Lewis is apparently one such. The handsome, casual spot that he operates with chef (and friend) Luciano Tona is about to celebrate a decade of service in what must be one of the quietest fanfares in Dublin dining. 28 He opened the place while still helming the kitchen in Chapter One as an escape one assumes from the institutional anxiety of fine dining. Having stepped aside for the savant Viljanen (whose food stopped me in my tracks a few weeks back) in that kitchen he’s now fully hands-on in this one. It must have felt like quitting Radiohead to join The Eagles. Like I said, Osteria Lucio is an attractive place to eat, from the high-ceilinged bar with its wood-burning oven to the extremely pleasing vaulted tunnel to the rear. On a squally Thursday night the place is filled with smiling folks at their ease in pools of amber light. Our third is in the early stages of a mandated gluten avoidance journey which is lamentable but when she reveals that she has also been deemed allergic to shellfish I immediately think aloud - just like Michael Winner back in the day! When she replies casually that he was a dear friend during her time in London my mind turns to shash. For the uninitiated, Winner was a well-to-do flâneur who sometimes directed movies in the 70s & 80s (often featuring ‘Charlie’ Bronson ‘wasting’ people) but who also slummed it as a restaurant critic back in the distant heyday of, I believe, The Sunday Times. His ‘Winner’s Dinners’ pieces still have a place in my heart (and in my prose). While still reeling at having discovered such a connection, my wife helpfully suggests that I had been made aware of it years ago, forgotten it and was now enjoying a kind of rediscovery. Even so. You’ll want to start by breaking some bread – the sourdough focaccia is about as good as it gets and barely needs the excellent tapenade and eggplant caviale that comes alongside. There’s good oil on the table. Don’t be a hero with those olives – pay heed to the al forno part of the menu description. They