Note Dublin: ‘Bright-eyed enthusiasm’ – restaurant review

‘It’s the kind of ineffably cool joint where they can serve some of the food on truly terrible floral plates, of the sort your aunty who smelled funny kept for best in 1973’: Note in Dublin. Photograph: Laurence McMahon/The Observer

Note Dublin, 26 Fenian Street, Dublin D02 FX09. Snacks and small plates €4-€13, larger plates €17-€32, desserts €7-€9, wines from €30

One of the things I like about going to restaurants is the opportunity to choose stuff: not just the venue, or the time you’ll visit, but the things you’re going to eat once you get there. Early on in my search to find the place in Dublin that captures what’s going on there right now, to surf the butter-crested wave of culinary nowness, I realised that my expectations needed to be managed. Blimey, the Dublin restaurant scene is complicated.