JO Olive's, a small restaurant above Kavanagh's pub on Main Street, Naas, Co Kildare, is one of those places which is very nearly all things to all people.
It's fashionable, which means you can rubber-neck local politicians and millionaires spending an evening away from their country piles and their horses. It's affordable, which means that, along with the rich and powerful, there is a well-mixed crowd of all ages, people who feel comfortable with the crisply descriptive hand-written menus and the small blackboards on the walls which announce the fish dishes and specials of the day. It has a good buzz, with the rather loud, rockist guitar music they play helping to pump the atmosphere pretty high, even on a midweek night. And they can do some pretty good food, which appreciates and acknowledges its season and its history, and which is fun to eat. You won't often be offered teal in Irish restaurants, so full credit to chef Olivier Pauloin-Valory for not only cooking teal and serving it with a port sauce and a little spinach, but for cooking it so well, exposing the voluble, sharp gaminess of the little bird. Pauloin-Valory is atypical of French chefs, inasmuch as his culinary ambit wanders freely away from the classic style of French cooking. He offers oriental chicken salad, makes salsa verde for fishcakes, uses smoked chilli oil with penne, serves chicken with a Thai green curry, and with both the menu and the daily specials you get the sense of a chef who likes to enquire and explore with the food he is cooking.
It all sounds like a made-to-measure mix for success. In fact, I feel this could be a significant restaurant, if only the owners - Pauloin-Valory and front of house manager Joe Grey - paid greater attention to a couple of key details. The service, for example, could find no decent sense of rhythm on the busy night we were there. Initially too slow in taking our order and bringing the wine list, it then became too quick, with waiters removing plates before all the dishes were finished.
This is a forgiveable mistake, of course, especially on a busy night, but it was the off-handedness of the young French waiters looking after us which was disappointing. They simply made no effort to engage us in any way during the meal, and while I appreciate that this may be a cultural difference regarding the nature of service, the fact is that such a cool style of service just doesn't suit the rest of Jo Olive's, which is buzzy and breezy and informal, something which one young woman working the floor, who took our orders for dessert, understood perfectly. The other detail that needs attention is the correlation between the menu descriptions and the food served. My main course was chalked up as fillet of cod with baby carrots and star anise, and while the cod was decent and the carrots were slender, there was no hint of any star anise. Likewise, my starter of truffled white pudding - in reality a French-style boudin blanc - promised a truffle jus, but there was no trace of truffle's musky sexiness in the jus. The pity here was that the pudding was good, and so was the salad and the croutons with it, and the cod was a pretty good piece of fish, but the lack of the promised key flavour elements rather blinded me to the other merits of the dishes.
And the cooking does have merits. The teal, as mentioned above, was just excellent, its earthiness making for an excellent, simple starter. Grilled slices of goose were served with white beans and a porcini oil and garlic, and while the meat could have been more tender, this was punchy cooking. A potato gratin was just perfect - creamy, rich, moist, perfectly seasoned - while vegetables of pureed carrot, boiled potatoes and fried mushrooms were fine, if a little unimaginative in the overall context of the cooking. Two chocolate desserts - an intriguing chocolate ravioli and a cracking chocolate and orange mousse - were well made and enjoyable.
Prices are very fair - starters are between u5 and u6, £5 and £6, main courses between u13 and u15, £13 and £15, and there is no service charge - and it is easy to see why Jo Olive's is so popular in the town, for there is a lot to like about this restaurant. My own feeling is that with just a little more discipline, this could be not merely a popular local place, but a valuable restaurant which would truly be all things to all the increasingly numerous men and women of Naas.
Jo Olive's, 10 South Main Street, Naas, Co Kildare, tel: 045-894788