How the Irish saved (culinary) civilization

By Paul Reidinger

TRY PICTURING SOMETHING for which there is no word and you run some risk of shorting out your brain. In high school I was transfixed by H.P. Lovecraft's horror story "The Colour out of Space," in which (if dim memory serves) a New England town is menaced by an object that plunges from the sky and is a color no one has ever seen before – or can describe, except by saying it can't be described.

The Phoenix, on Valencia Street, would hardly be an appropriate setting for one of Lovecraft's dark tales, though it is dark inside and in that respect does resemble a beer hall favored by union members or maybe political apparatchiks of the old school. (A long, amply stocked bar does run along one wall near the front of the space.) The only missing details are cigarette smoke, a pool table, and deafening AOR music. But the Phoenix is also, and perhaps primarily, a restaurant, as evidenced by the specials chalkboard-displayed on the sidewalk and by the booths and tables that stretch all the way to the back wall before turning left past the kitchen door. And ... it's Irish, and so rather pubby: Irish bacon (an underrated delicacy) figures in many of the dishes, about which more anon, and the youthful staff speak their cheerful English with decidedly Celtic lilts. (The resemblance to the Liberties, another Irish-accented superpub, is more than coincidental; both concerns are owned by Eugene Power.)

If there's a word that captures these several senses of the Phoenix, its collage of realities, I don't know it. I do know that the place is congenial; its dim lighting soothes, its music is played loudly enough to be heard but not so loudly as to overwhelm. That sonic continence was, for me, the biggest single clue that Americans weren't running the show. Americans are – let's be honest – drama queens, perpetrators of spectacle, and whatever it is, we like it loud.

So the Phoenix is all the deafening restaurant-pub-sports bar places you've ever been in, except you can have a conversation there in a normal tone of voice. There are those of us who regard this experience as being little short of miraculous. I even managed to quiz the chef, Nigel Halligan, about the mysteries of his Bailey's Irish Cream cheesecake ($4), to wit, given its exceptional creaminess and slightly silky sheen, had he made it with mascarpone? Answer: no. It wasn't made with much sugar, either – just enough to soften the pungency of the standard-issue cream cheese. All in all a subtle and satisfying dish, masquerading under a garish, TGI Fridays-style name.

The fineness of the cheesecake is no fluke. Taken as a whole, the Phoenix's menu, while lacking pretense, is solid and occasionally a bit daring. The idea of celery-apple soup ($2.75), for instance, might give some people pause – I noticed a distinct blanching in the face across the table as I ordered a bowl – but it turned out, in its parsnippy milkiness and the juxtaposition of sweet to bitter, to give strange, wintry pleasure.

Irish bacon is less fatty than our own (like Canadian bacon, it's made from pork loin instead of the pork bellies from which ours is produced; our bacon is known as "streaky bacon" on the other side of the Atlantic), and it's cut from much broader slabs. It made a zesty addition to a half-pound cheeseburger ($7.95), atop which it didn't get lost even in a crowd of mushrooms, mashed avocado, and cheddar cheese. And its smoky saltiness nicely completed the kitchen's garlic-creamy reinterpretation of carbonara ($10.50), served here over linguine instead of the traditional spaghetti and very substantially reinforced with shreds of chicken.

We did note a tendency to underseason the soups. Both the celery-apple and, on a subsequent visit, the vegetable barley ($4) came alive only after a hefty jolt of salt. On the other hand, the fries accompanying the sandwiches had been generously sprinkled, and the Cajun chicken sandwich ($7.50), a grilled half-breast, had been rubbed beforehand with a gratifyingly incendiary spice blend.

One bad dish: potted hummus ($5.75). "Potted" sounds unfamiliar and appealingly quaint to the American ear (whose acuity surely has been lessened by unending din and hype), but really all it turns out to be is some hummus, tasty but a bit thick, packed into a ramekin. You eat it with a few sad (and cold) little pita triangles, and if you're on a diet, you will appreciate the generous scattering of raw carrot and celery spears. And if you're not, you probably won't, as we didn't.

But of course virtually all menus have a dud or two, and the Phoenix's are easily enough avoided. The best thing to do is steer for anything with Irish bacon in it. While you're waiting, hoist a pint. Hum a bar or two. Talk to the person and/or persons across the table, marveling that you don't have to shout. Chat up Chef Nigel; ask him the good word. If he tells you, let me know.