Today’s column was meant to be a hand-holding skip through Kwãnt, where I understand a combination of the name, the precision and price of the menu, and the great big bouncer scowling on the door can all be a little intimidating. I would have heard your concerns, nodded thoughtfully, and then, instead of trying to decipher the difference between amaros, I’d have cheated and asked owner Erik Lorincz to take care of everything.
Only at dusk, as I was striding purposefully to Kwãnt’s new home on Stratton Street, I got lost, and found myself grateful that Chinatown still has restaurants that serve come 2am and don’t look too closely at your eyes. Kwãnt — the thing to say is “quaint” by the way— can wait.
And so instead we’re in Gibney’s, my work local. It is a bar crouched beneath Richard Corrigan’s Daffodil Mulligan, and run by Cormac, the scion of the Gibney family of Malahide, where a pub of the same name is considered among Ireland’s finest. Gibney’s here is not a pub, exactly. Nothing is exact. Seasons do not exist (it is always cosy midwinter), time is only ever a suggestion (it’s close to closing, but there’s time for a quick one), and even the location feels suspect. It sits in EC1, just as the City gets going, but if you’d had a heavy lunch, you could conceivably be at the bar, come to, and start scrolling your phone for a plane ticket while vowing to cut back on the midday martinis. The combination of dark wood, red leather stools and low brass-chained lamps somehow brings to mind Dublin boozers and New York bars; pints of the black stuff and quiet fingers of whiskey as well, which is handy as it specialises in both.
The other thing it specialises in, aside from occasional live music, is the kind of service where knowing judgment is all. Cormac and his team are there, mindfully watching, quick on the draw with a crack, artfully quiet when they hear something they shouldn’t. They’re accommodating, too: Gibney’s is known for Guinness, so pints are forever settling on the box taps, the boys making sure no one waits long. There’s no complaint if you’re in for tequila or a hot toddy; they’ll do you just a juice. With Gibney’s, there’s no hand-holding required, and if there were, they’d be the ones to do it.
Which came in handy last week, as about 16 hours after the Chinese, and via a countryside jolly, I met my friend James here and convinced him to have port-and-brandies with me. A drink mostly long extinct in London, in Ireland apparently it’s still a goer; Cormac even had gentle tweaks for my recipe (“go easy on the port, there”). And well, a few of those later, for some reason I needed a little hand-holding myself. So they did. That’s Gibney’s, though: not a whit of intimidation in the place.
