​As we come to the end of the year it is time to wrap up our reviews and ratings, so below is a short round-up of some recent reviews and some updated ratings here.
 
L’Ecrivain, Dublin
L’Ecrivain continued to impress and improve on a recent visit. The seasonal tasting menu was well executed and included some stunning dishes. Venison, perfectly prepared and rolled in ash, with a deep beetroot sauce and blackberries. Roasted quail, with an amazing black pudding and fermented barley was another highly accomplished and excellent dish. Scallops with fermented cabbage was clean, with great depth and balance. The whole meal was accomplished and polished from one of the best restaurants in the capital.
 
Thorntons, Dublin
Our meals over the years in Thorntons have been a mixed bag. Some have been fantastic, like our tasting menu meal last year which was the best meal we had in Ireland last year. Some have been very poor however. Our recent lunch fell somewhere in between. A decent opening course of nicely cooked pigeon with a juniper sauce was a good start. The main was the let-down though. Pheasant, cooked for 10 hours, managed to keep the gamey flavour, but tasted overcooked and dry, served with an undercooked tiny cube of purple potato. It was not saved by a nice jus. Desserts were quite pleasing; a cleansing and punchy poitin sour, which was like a seasonal cocktail, and a nice chocolate crème bruleé, which would have been better without the popping candy. Thornton’s can be anything, and Kevin Thornton is one of Ireland’s finest ever chefs, but to us eating there in the last few years has been a bit of a lucky dip.
 
ETTO, Dublin
ETTO's€35 tasting menu, served Monday to Wednesday, proved to be an excellent saviour on a cold wet night. It is built around quality produce and good old fashioned cookery. Starting with some snacks of olives, ham and excellent croquettes. A lovely pork cheek braised in fino was moreish, indulgent and warming. A warming dessert of boozy prunes with mascarpone provided the warmth we needed to head back into the cold. ETTO is a charming bistro serving some well sourced and well executed food with friendly service. 

L'Ecrivain on Dublin's Baggot Steet has been a stalwart among Dublin's top restaurants for more than two decades. Established in 1989 by Chef Derry Clarke and his wife Sallyanne, it has been a hallmark for quality ever since. However, over the last couple of years the restaurant was starting to go a little bit stale. The food was still very good, but it was safe, a little bit dated, the whole experience was a bit unmemorable and you got a sense that the kitchen and front of house were just going through the motions.

Perhaps fearing the same and so he could commit more time to his other pursuits, Clarke brought in Tom Doyle as head chef near the start of the year and with him came a new energy throughout the restaurant. Doyle, who was getting some acclaim for his work as head chef of Mulberry Garden, quickly imparted his own style and modernised the menu.

Clarke and Doyle's food style is quite different and there may have been a concern that this may have led to an incoherent menu, with dishes from both chefs trying to sit side by side. There is still a bit of a crossover at times, but a dish of foie gras, which has been a regular on Clarke's tasting menu, has been changed slightly. Now served with pickled cherries and gingerbread, it has been lightened and enhanced to be one of the best dishes on the tasting menu and shows that the two styles can align. The same can be said for a serving of smoked salmon, served simply with dill and horseradish, lightly smoked under a cloche.

The food in L'Ecrivain is now lighter, not heavily relying on butters or creams, but instead using oils and foams, (flavoursome foams done properly, not those bland types that collapse as soon as they are looked at), to add the moisture to a dish and making great use of acidity. The food is natural and the dishes are uncluttered with the quality of produce allowed to shine through on the plate. A serving of beautiful cooked quail with green beans and kale oil epitomised this pure, almost vegetal, style of cookery. 

Fermentation has started to appear on the menu giving an interesting depth to dishes. A serving of cucumber and fermented cabbage was delicious and it would be interesting to see fermentation explored further as, when done correctly, it has the potential to create a whole new flavour.

A dish of cod with smoked eel and beach herbs was dry, a bit dull and lacked cohesion; the one disappointment on an otherwise excellent tasting menu. Desserts are high quality too, the best being a beautifully light dessert of fromage blanc with apricot which imparted a subtle sweetness which worked well with the salty unami from the fromage.

The changes in the kitchen seems to have created energy and enthusiasm in the dining room too. The young service team are welcoming, knowledgeable and engaging with the right level of formality. L'Ecrivian's 6 course tasting menu for 75 euro represents excellent value for this quality of food.

L'Ecrivain is now a very interesting restaurant again, it has regained some of the relevance it has lost. When a restaurant has a Chef Patron like Derry Clarke, one of Ireland's greatest, and a head Chef like Tom Doyle, the next generation of top Irish chefs, then it already has a lot going for it and we will be watching to see if there is further progress to come.