Reviews         Purple Ocean Dun Laoghaire's Mauve Lighthouse It was a dark and stormy night when we set out for Purple Ocean, a beacon of light overlooking the harbour in Dun Laoghaire. The building resembles a lighthouse perched on top of the ferry terminal on St. Michael's Pier. You enter by climbing a long metal stairway underlit by purple lights. In fact, the colour purple is most definitely the theme, with fluorescent purple lights inside and out. The main room of the restaurant has great views out over the harbour, and if you make it to the smaller top section (early booking essential), you have a wonderful full 360 degree panorama out over Dublin Bay. Open from morning till night. I can see this being an incredibly popular place to eat during the summer - there is outdoor seating, although this was certainly not an option in the bitterly cold, gale blowing the night we were there. Starters are all under €10, main courses mainly around the €20 mark. The menu is carefully thought out including classics such as tournedos Rossini, stuffed loin of pork, and fish and chips, along with modern favourites such as Thai crab fishcakes, and green chicken curry. There was also the odd flight of fancy - scallops with black pudding, and angels on horseback. I started off with duck spring rolls - the shredded duck was tender and juicy. the beansprouts lent the required crunch, all wrapped up in a nicely crisp spring roll. Very good all round. Her mussels were sweet and tender, and came in a rich tomato sauce. They were served in an amazing piece of modern crockery, a feature of each dish as we went along. For my main course, I went for the scallops with black pudding in a pommery mustard sauce. The scallops were plentiful, perfectly cooked and very flavoursome, the combination with black pudding works. The accompanying rich creamy mustard sauce was good although perhaps a little too plentiful, threatening to overwhelm the delicate scallops. My companion ordered her steak rare, and examining it on arrival, declared it well done. The waitress apologised, and whisked away the offending meat, only to reappear two minutes later. She suggested the steak be examined in the clear light of the kitchen, and sure enough, once out of the glare of the fluorescent purple lighting, it most certainly was rare as ordered. It is not just the food that has a plummy glow - the light, combined with purple chairs and blinds give a strange, slightly greying sheen to the diners. From a good, well-annotated wine list, helpfully broken up by style, I chose the La Regia Specula Montepulciano d'Abruzzo 2003, medium-bodied and nicely ripe. House wines, all available by the glass, are €19-20. There are plenty of real gems at the upper end, although it could do with more options around €30. In addition, I whet my appetite with a fine glass of fresh, chilled fino sherry, something you don't find too often in restaurants these days. For dessert I had chocolate biscuit cake, and a glass of the magnificent Paul duver Late Harvest Riesling. The chocolate biscuit cake proved a perfect finale there was evidence of good quality chocolate, it was not too heavy, and the raisins gave it a lovely fruitiness. The wine was superb. With a herb tea for her, the final reckoning would have been a very reasonable €110. Would have, except we bumped into a couple of friends and revisited the Paul duver Late Harvest Riesling a few more times, only just making the last Dart home. TD Words: John Wilson Picture: Mark Halliday Purple Ocean St. Michael's Pier, Dun Laoghaire Harbour, Co. Dublin Tel. 2845590   ________________  Purple's Sure to Reign by PAOLO TULLIO Irish Independent November 27, 2004 You KNOW what? Maybe the fundamentalists are right. Break a rule just once and you open the proverbial flood-gates. The thin edge of the wedge, the slippery slope, beckons you. Mark Twain observed that once a man begins to commit murders, then soon he will find himself thinking little of theft, and may eventually end up taking the Lord's name in vain. Such is the power of habituation to dull our sensibilities. A couple of weeks ago I broke along-standing rule of~ne and visited a restaurant that had only recently opened. Now, a few weeks later, I've done it again. It's generally not a good idea to do this. Restaurants are like any other enterprise, you design evelyt;hing as best you can, but -, the finest planning often doesn't foresee all the possibilities that can occur when the sub-systems start to inter-react - or to put it simply, new restaurants need time to settle in. This week I was off to dinner with Mary Finnegan and we met in Dalkey. I'd asked her a few days earlier if she'd heard of anywhere good, and it happened she had. A restaurant on Dun Laoghaire harbour was her suggestion, a place called Purple Ocean, so she booked it for us. As we drove along the seafront in Sandycove, a wall of purple lights was visible in the area ofthe harbour, about a mile away. 'Could that be it?' I asked. 'That's definitely it', said Mary. At the roundabout in front of Restaurant na Mara we turned down toward the sea and parked - outside the terminal building. A short walk took us to the entrance steps of Purple Ocean. I'll describe them, because they impressed me. They're steel and have an open tread, they slope gently upwards for a long way and they're underlit - in purple of " course. At the end of the stairs you find a two-storey building lit prettily with outdoordo~ighters, also purple. Inside it's very new and shiny. The interior lighting has a, well, purple hue; the tables are black marble, the chairs upholstered in blue. I should point out that if the blue end of the spectrum isn't to your liking, this restaurant may not be the place for you. The tables are very prettily set - even the nightlights sit in a cradle of (blue) amethyst crystals and napkins are, okay I'll say it, blue. very tirst thing that I noticed - other than the colour of the lighting - that Purple Ocean doesn't suffer from a lack of staff. It scores where many newly opened restaurants fail, it has enough staff to cope, even in the event of a customer invasion. And it wasn't just numbers, they were all very professional and the service thought came to mind. You shouldn't throughout the evening was impeccable. Both the menu and the wine list come in very smart covers of brushed aluminium, which nicely harmonise with all the good design in the room. The wine list runs to a few pages, and although there are some wines around the €20, many cluster around the €30, which makes any thought of a second bottle disappear. Mary decided she wanted a red wine for a change, so I chose a Salice Salentino - one I like from Candido. The wine list doesn't just list the wines, it also has some effusive descriptions of each wine in a high rococo style, some of which are real jewels. Good breads came to the table with a bottle of mineral water for me, while we studied the menu. Lots of likely candidates to choose from, but in the end Mary began with crab cakes and I picked the devils on horseback. These arrived on beautiful plain white crockery, Mary's like an oblong dish, and mine like a long, slim fish platter which only just fitted onto the table. The crab cakes were in a fine crumb and they had a very light texture, although not strongly crab flavoured. The My devils on horseback were superb; chicken livers wrapped in bacon and cooked to perfection, leaving the totally melt-in-the-mouth. Definitely one of the best dishes I've eaten oflate. For her main course Mary chose the slow-cooked lamb shank and I had the tuna steak. Looking at these two beautifully presented plates another thought came to mind. You shouldn't come to this restaurant if you're not hungry. Mary's lamb shank was big, as well being succulent and cooked to the point where it fell off the bone. My tuna steak was about the size of an old 45 record and about a half inch thick. With these came another pretty plate of our vegetables; some really tasty potatoes gratin, some carrots Julienne and broccoli. Once again, these dishes were expertly made, good to eat and both of them cost less than €20. Apart from the good food and excellent service, Purple Ocean has another major plus. It has very fine views. One side of the restaurant is plate glass, and through it you see the sails and rigging of the yachts that bob gently in the marina. We finished the meal with an espresso, and a good one too. A bill for €82.90 not including service was remarkably good value for this fine meal in very smart surroundings. Note: Paolo Tullio is a reviewer and wine correspondent for the Irish Independent and is well know as resident critic on the hit show 'The Restaurant'.

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