Heavens Above stuck in Limbo

**UPDATE 2007/11/08: A comment below indicates that the restaurant is now under entirely new management etc, so please consider this review out of date.**

My crazy parents decided to babysit all their grandchildren and sent the extended family out for a meal on the August Bank holiday Saturday. We’ve all had good meals over the years in Heavens Above in Wexford Town but unfortunately, for most of the group, this wasn’t one of those times.

The restaurant is above a fabulous old pub with the usual diddley-ay bric a brac on the walls. It is a look that was done to death in Dublin in the 80’s and 90’s but this feels like it might be real. It is a lovely airy pub with Erdinger on tap, which kept myself and Tony happy. We had booked for 8.30 but had to hang around downstairs until after 9. Even tho the place never looked completely full all night, the service was incredibly slow overall. OK, we were a group of eight, but that is hardly a stretch for a humming kitchen.

The table seemed to split pretty evenly between fish dishes at one end and steak at the other. Only the steak eaters left happy. The menu semed very limited in scope and unadventurous which was at odds with our previous experiences. I heard later that the chef who made the place famous had been poached by Forde’s along with a lot of the other staff (more of that in the next review). You could tell.

I enjoyed my toulouse sausage on lentils but Kevin thought it was bland and to be honest I could have rustled it up in 10 minutes at home with my eyes closed.

The fillet steaks with cafe de paris sauce were excellent and cooked just right.

The various types of fish that were ordered were all rated as very disappointing with a general feel that everything was missing simple touches like some butter or cream in the mashed spuds.

Desserts were skipped but the coffee was fine. The bill came to €380 with an automatic service charge of 10% due to the table size and we did not top that up. This included several pints for six of the diners and one bottle of white. Usual story with me - if it was far cheaper, I wouldn’t complain too much as the meal was fine. But at that price level, you can get far better food in other places in the town.

[tags]Heavens Above, Restaurant, Wexford, Ireland[/tags]