1 week Ago By Corinna Hardgrave
It is the sort of place you’d stumble into on a rainy evening in Bordeaux and spend the rest of your trip trying to find again. Except it is not in Bordeaux. It is in Dublin, hidden away in the well-heeled neighbourhood of Ranelagh.
It is French, obviously, but not in an Emily in Paris way. It was opened last autumn by Colin Dapot from Toulouse, who manages front of house, and his wife, Sidjy Batista, from La Rochelle, who commands the pans. It is long and narrow, with a deli counter to the front, and just enough space for a handful of tables at the back.
By day it sells coffee, croissants, deli bits and does a good brunch trade. Two evenings a week, it opens for dinner. There is a short, quietly confident menu and an interesting wine list.
Dapot moves from table to table, chatting in a way that makes you feel less like a customer and more like a friend who has just happened to stop by for some food. He remembers faces, recommends dishes, pours small tastes of wine and generally ensures that no one leaves feeling anything less than delighted. He’s a man who appears to have cracked the very particular formula of making people feel welcome without ever trying too hard.
Similarly, our waiter, Lucas Soret, is warm, chatty and disarmingly French. There’s a small selection of starters, five mains and three desserts. We start with the cheese croquettes (€7) and onion soup (€9).
The three croquettes are small, crisp and piping hot, oozing with raclette-laden béchamel, accompanied by a tomato jam that is not too sweet and delivers a gentle touch of acidity. The soup is lighter than expected, the onions not quite cooked down to the dark, sticky depths they usually reach, the whole thing on the milder side. Not bad, just gentler than it could be.
It would benefit from a few more onions and being taken further, to the point where the onions collapse into the deep, burnished, borderline-blackened intensity that gives a true French onion soup its power. The wine list is smart – nearly 20 by the glass and a strong spread of French regions. There is also an option to pick a retail bottle and add €10 corkage.
A Famille Paquet Mâcon-Villages (€43) suited our meal well. Then the mains. The fish pie (€21) is good, more of a gratin than a pie, with a crisp, golden top and a filling that veers just on the right side of indulgence: a mixture of white fish, a little smoked fish, and some small, neatly cut potatoes.
Fish pie can often feel heavy, a solid brick of mash and béchamel that sits in the stomach for hours. This one is lighter, more refined, but still satisfying. The accompanying green salad is more than just an obligatory handful of leaves: there’s bite to the leaves, a proper vinaigrette and a sense someone actually tasted it before it left the kitchen.
The pork in mustard sauce (€22) is a rich, old-fashioned dish, properly sauced, served with spaetzle (Alsatian egg-based dumplings) and courgette spaghetti, the latter a little under-seasoned and perhaps slightly unnecessary addition. The spaetzle are the real highlight, soft, buttery and just the right side of substantial. The pork itself is tender and perfectly cooked, the mustard sauce the sort of thing you would happily drink from a spoon.
It is a dish that feels genuinely French, in the way that most self-consciously French restaurants fail to achieve. It is comforting, nostalgic but never heavy-handed. Desserts are simple but tasty.
The speculoos biscuit with marmalade cream (€9) has a buttery, firm base, similar to what you get with a cheesecake, and is topped with orange-scented cream piped in rosettes. The apple cake (€9), a recipe from Batista’s mum, is a spongy cake with chunks of apple running through it and caramelised on top. Served with ice cream, it tastes home-made in the best way.
The thing about Excuse My French is that it doesn’t overreach. The plates arrive simply, without flourishes or smears of sauce. And yet, for all that restraint, nothing about it feels basic.
The service is notably good, and inspires a quietly brilliant atmosphere – a place where people meet over a casual bite and a good bottle of wine. And that absolutely works for me. Dinner for two with a bottle of wine was €120.
The verdict Simple French food and the most wonderful neighbourhood atmosphere. Food provenance Free-range pork from McCarren’s in Cavan, and free-range chicken from Glinvalley Farm. Vegetarian options Red spices hummus, cheese croquettes, roasted Camembert and roasted vegetable crumble.
Wheelchair access Fully accessible with an accessible toilet. Music If there is any, it’s not audible over the buzz of chat. Corinna Hardgrave, a contributor to The Irish Times, writes a weekly restaurant column.
