Juice, Dublin

Juice is effectively Dublin's only proper sit-down vegetarian restaurant. I haven't been frequenting it much recently due to generally not eating out much, and previous less than perfect experiences, but as there was someone to take me out for dinner on a Saturday evening, I booked a table on the basis of Juice being somewhere I knew would be able to feed me.

Booking the table turned out not to have been necessary; they weren't exactly busy. Our food, his Cannelloni and my Asian noodles in Ponzu Sauce, arrived without undue delay, and our very friendly and solicitous waiter kept our glasses of water topped up while managing to stay unobtrusive.

The noodles were quite nice, the vegetables were stir-fried to absolute perfection, and the tofu was wonderfully marinated. The sauce itself was flavorful and fragrant, if a bit oily, and obviously made with sweet chilli sauce of the bottled variety. Nevertheless, I'd be happy enough to have this dish again.

My dinner companion scraped his plate clean, and commented that this was one of the very rare times he's had spinach - apparently you couldn't really taste it from the cheese and all the other nice things in the cannelloni.

For a drink, I had a freshly squeezed apple and carrot juice, and he one of the lassis on the menu. The juice was nice and fresh, but would probably have worked better chilled, for my palate at least.

So the food was good, but what especially struck me was the quality of service, as it rather exceeded what I've experienced at Juice in the past. As for the interior or ambiance, Juice evidently hasn't been refurbished since it opened, and while the wear and tear isn't showing as such, the decor is starting to feel a bit dated, with the fairy lights at the back wall and the canvas covering the ceiling. Still, it's pleasant enough.

This dinner experience at Juice gets four chick-peas for food, four for service and three for everything else. Worth a visit, if you're a vegan holidaying, or indeed living, in Dublin, and looking to go out for a proper, nice dinner, and not always only because you don't have all that much choice in this fair city.