First Look: High-end British steakhouse opens in Dublin city centre

The first surprise on entering the new Hawksmoor steakhouse in Dublin, nine days before the first paying customers arrive, is that it is all set up and ready to go, with tables set, glassware and bottles polished, napkins folded and every surface gleaming. The only hint that this was a building site mere weeks ago are a couple of workmen doing a few final fixes.

This degree of advance readiness is highly unusual where major restaurant renovation projects are concerned. This one was always going to be impressive, though – the team behind the Hawksmoor steakhouses, with 10 restaurants in the UK and one in New York (with Chicago planned for next year), have deep pockets and a stellar reputation when it comes to breathing life into historic buildings and giving them new purpose as luxurious diningrooms.

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The restaurant will welcome its first customers for an eight-day soft launch (50 per cent off food) beginning next Tuesday. Those reservations, for a minimum of 100 covers each night, sold out online in 14 minutes. The official opening is May 25th and the reservations book goes live tomorrow (Thursday, May 11th). The restaurant will open for dinner seven days a week and for lunch Wednesday to Sunday.

Menu prices are still being finalised, but a 275g fillet steak will cost €42. With chips (€6) and a choice of sauce (€3.50), that main course will cost north of €50. Add a side of creamed spinach (€7) and you’re edging towards €60. A 300g fillet at the group’s Spitalfields site in London costs £43, again with sides extra. Back in Dublin, a 227g “petit fillet” at Shanahan’s on St Stephen’s Green will set you back €56, with chips an additional €8.80. FXB Steakhouse on Pembroke Road has a 227g fillet for €44, including a choice of both sauce and side. Rump, the cheapest cut of steak on the menu at Hawksmoor, is €26. An express menu, with three choices at each course, will be available until 6pm, Monday to Saturday.

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The first branch of Hawksmoor opened in Spitalfields in east London 2006 and the London restaurants in the group of which there are now seven, were jointly crowned the world’s best steak restaurant in 2022. This year, it came second in the prestigious list, after Parrilla Don Julio in Buenos Aires, Argentina. (It’s worth noting that FX Buckley on Dublin’s Lower Pembroke Street came sixth this year.)

The Irish capital had been on the horizons of co-founders, Will Beckett and Huw Gott – childhood friends as well as business partners – for some time. “We’ve been coming to Dublin for years to spend time in one of our favourite cities for food and drink, always keeping an eye open for a beautiful space. When we saw the former National Bank on 34 College Green, we fell in love,” Beckett said when the opening was announced.

The landmark building on College Green, Dublin 2, designed by William Barnes in the mid-1840s, with its 40ft cast iron dome and ornate plasterwork, is a comfortable fit for Hawksmoor in a way that the building’s previous tenant, US fashion retailer Abercrombie & Fitch, perhaps wasn’t.

Hawksmoor has taken a 20-year lease on the premises, owned by Paddy McKillen and Tony Leonard’s Clarendon Properties. CBRE Dublin, which negotiated the deal last year, described it as “the biggest flagship food and beverage international letting in the country”. Restoration and fit out costs were estimated at €4 million.

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Walking into the restaurant, it is easy to see where the money has been spent. Once through the front doors, the vastness of the former banking hall becomes apparent. Guests will be greeted at a host station to the side of the main bar. This is where pre and post dinner drinks can be ordered and there are also tables for dining and bar counter seats.

A huge wood and glass partition effectively breaks this area off from the main diningroom, where there are 152 seats at a mixture of booths and tables, dominated by the ornate dome overhead. The comfortable leather upholstered dining chairs are a feature of Hawksmoor restaurants, as are the wooden table tops and parquet floor. The overall feel is clubby and quite masculine, with a lot of dark panelling, and the leather upholstery softened in spots with velvet. Rooms leading off the main diningroom are named after cattle from Dexter and Kerry cow herd books dating back more than a century, including None the Wiser, an 18-seat private diningroom.

Huw Gott, speaking on the phone from Japan where he was attending a family wedding (his wife is Japanese), explains that although there are lots of interiors features common to the group’s restaurants, they each have their own personality, drawing on their history and location. “We try and make them all look and feel like they really belong in the building they’re in and in the city they’re in,” he says. Mai-Yee Ng, head of design at Hawksmoor, has worked on 11 of the group’s 12 sites and oversaw the Dublin project.

Gott, who is heavily involved in the food sourcing for Hawksmoor, describes the selection of produce available to the restaurant in Ireland as “such a joy”. He’s coy about exactly where the steaks they will serve are coming from, other than confirming that it will be sourced both north and south of the border. “We’re pretty sensitive about our beef supply but it will always be from small holding farms with 40 to 80 cattle, out on grass as nature intended.”

In addition to fillet, rib-eye, sirloin and rump, at set prices ranging upwards from €26 for the rump, there will be larger cuts of chateaubriand, porterhouse, bone-in prime rib and T-bone on the menu, sold by the 100g and intended for sharing. The beef is dry-aged for 35 days and grilled over charcoal.

Pescatarians will have plenty of choice. A dozen oysters were sampled before the three that make it to the menu were selected. Scallops harvested from traditional currachs have been sourced and the main course fish offering is monkfish from Irish waters. He says he is excited about the Dublin lawyer dish – lobster cooked in cream and whiskey with leeks and Cais na Tire cheese. “I like the fact that it is so called apparently because it’s as rich as a Dublin lawyer. This is one that we’ve spent a lot of time on. We tried it with a dozen different Irish whiskeys and it just wasn’t quite delivering. And then, we landed on the Teelings Blackpitts peated whiskey and it’s got a real punch to it.” The menu price of this dish wasn’t available at the time of going to press.

This will not be a destination restaurant for those following a vegan diet. The launch menu has two vegetarian starters, asparagus Hollandaise and heritage tomato salad with St Tola goat’s cheese. The vegetarian main course, which co-founder Will Beckett describes as “something that could have the steak-eaters at the table feeling a bit jealous”, is a version of beef Wellington, a puff pastry pie with Ballylisk cheese, roasted celeriac, three types of mushroom, shallot and herb duxelles.

Beckett also shares some insight into the dessert menu. “For desserts, we’ve brought over our most popular dessert from Hawksmoor New York, which we’ve never had on this side of the Atlantic before – Peanut Butter Louis, our (irreverent) take on the eponymous dessert at the ultra-luxe three-Michelin-starred Le Louis XV in Monte Carlo. And, our executive pastry chef, Carla Henriques, has developed an absolutely delicious Irish Coffee Tiramisu.”

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Alex McGettigan, born in Bray and raised in Bristol, is general manager, having worked with Hawksmoor in the UK for 12 years. He says that recruitment for the Dublin site has not proved to be an issue for the company, which has a reputation for being an excellent employer. Interestingly, his front of house team will not wear uniforms, though all will be identifiable by their Hawksmoor aprons. “We want people to come as themselves. I imagine that’s going to be something that will get commented on a bit; some people will really love it, I reckon there might be some people that don’t love it as much,” he says.

Sinead McCarthy, who previously worked in Volpe Nera, is wine manager. Starting with 125 wines on the list, she says she is “looking forward to putting her own stamp on it” and will have at least one white and one red – “hopefully two” – under €35. There will be a Monday corkage deal of €5 a bottle. The cocktail list will include some listings from the UK and New York drinks menus as well as a selection developed for the Dublin restaurant. Joseph Ryan, who is from Liverpool and has an Irish wife, has been appointed head chef. Ryan, who has extensive experience of cooking over fire, will work with three senior sous chefs.