Restaurant-Guide.com
hand picked restaurants

Housed on the top floor of the Harvey Nichols store in the Dundrum Town Centre complex on Sandyford Road, the First Floor Restaurant offers a modern European menu in a stylish contemporary setting, complete with a dance floor and guest DJs to help you unwind. Just the place for a quick lunch or a more relaxed dinner after shopping or sightseeing, the restaurant is also just a short walk from the Mill Theatre and is ideal for a pre or post show dinner.

Using the finest locally sourced produce, especially beef from Donald Russell's and fish from Hanlon's, the à la carte offers small plates of Carlingford Lough rock oysters served with tabasco, lemon and shallot vinegar; a charcuterie plate of Spanish meats and accompaniments for two and oak smoked seared tuna with Chantertais melon, pink grapefruit and soy jelly.

For the main course choices could include Harvey Nichols fish pie with winter vegetables; loin of Wicklow venison with red cabbage, violet potatoes, chocolate and spice and chicken two ways with sage and onion stuffing, fondant potato and jus. Steak lovers can try succulent Donald Russell’s 8oz fillet of beef with shallot puree, spinach, duxelle, truffle dauphinoise and Perigord sauce or a 10 oz ribeye with chunky chips, roscoff, heirloom tomato and bearnaise or peppercorn sauce. Daily specials are also available.
 
Vegetarians are also well catered for with dishes such as dolce latte, walnuts, pear and mesclun salad, roasted vine tomato soup with brie Cromesque and basil, beetroot papardelle with goat's cheese crotin and beetroot textures and wild mushroom risotto with aged parmesan.

The lunch menu is equally luxurious and offers starters of crayfish cocktail with shellfish dressing, ham hock terrine with potato salad or cecina with asparagus, bone marrow, watercress, poached egg and béarnaise. Then follow with mains of braised pork belly with barley, parmesan, squash and rocket; shellfish linguini with chilli, crème fraiche and parmesan or fish and chips with tartare sauce and pea relish. Guests could also order an express business lunch which is served within 45 minutes. A Sunday lunch menu is also available.

The tempting dessert selection includes lychee crème brûlée with citrus sorbet and marshmallow, Harvey Nichols rhubarb fool and chocolate brownie with peanut mousse and caramel.

At the vibrant bar, next door to the restaurant, enjoy a range of exciting cocktails along with a tapas menu. An excellent wine list includes expertly chosen wines from around the world alongside exceptional house wines such as a Sauvignon Blanc from Bordeaux and a Vin de Pays d'Oc Merlot.

The First Floor also offers diners a variety of interesting programmes including wine tastings, wine and food pairing evenings and cocktail master classes. Private dining for 6-10 people with chef’s special five-course menu is also available.

To gain further information, just visit their extremely comprehensive Website.

With quality food, friendly staff, quick service and excellent value for money, Nando's is a great place to eat. Don't expect identikit, pre-fab restaurant interiors which are usually a staple of the larger chains; each restaurant is tailored to its local surroundings and customers, offering up a unique restaurant experience to go with the equally unique taste of legendary, Portuguese, Peri-Peri chicken.

Your peri-peri chicken, when the chips are down so to speak, is a fresh A grade chicken that has never seen the inside of a freezer, but having made the supreme sacrifice is butterfly-cut, marinated for 24 hours in a secret brew called - you've guessed - peri-peri, and is then cooked to your choice over an open flame.

There are, of course, many variations on this broad theme, numerous plays on words such as Nando's experi-perience, peri-peri good reasons why you should eat at a Nando's' and all one hopes is that for their sake chicken never goes out of fashion. New Nando's are opening all the time, peri-peri quickly in fact, the spicy bastes become hotter and more daring, and the full platter offers a whole chicken, large chips or spicy rice and Nando's salad or coleslaw.

Since chickens are vegetarian it seems logical you can order veggie or bean burgers and patties, and still feel the heat from the peppers. All in all, Nando's is hotly recommended for those occasions when you have a large following of permanently hungry children, or adults even, to keep happy - the only thing taken really seriously is the quality of those peri-peri good chickens.

Nando's is a place for bright people who love to laugh and love to eat, and is guaranteed to spice up your taste buds. Their fun approach to life means that when you visit Nando's you can fully relax without the airs and graces associated with more starchy dining out.

For the location of your nearest Nando's restaurant and a host of details about menus, parties and drinks, a click on their Website will reveal a Pandora's box of information.