San Diego Spotlight : Now-Reliable Reidy O’Neil’s Adds Nouvelle Cuisine

It’s conceivable--just barely, to be sure--that some cook in the past decade might have added a few slices of kiwi to a platter of corned beef and cabbage and dubbed it Irish nouvelle cuisine .

At least the color would have been appropriate in this preliminary efflorescence of la nouvelle kiwisine irlandaise .

Kiwis would seem none too likely to find safe harbor at a place with a name as beefy as Reidy O’Neil’s, a compound that takes into account two of the partners in this downtown bastion of Auld Sod eating and drinking. (The more famous at present is attorney Mike Neil, the Marine Corps Reserve brigadier general called to active duty during the Gulf War to command Camp Pendleton.) Corned beef and cabbage, garnished with carrots and potatoes, remains the cornerstone of a menu that also pays a good deal of attention to steaks.

Even so, the wind shifted several months back with the arrival of chef Jim Hill, known locally over the years for his residencies in the kitchens of Piret’s, Vic’s and Rainwater’s, the latter two famed for their devotion to beef. Hill’s fealty to good red meat was demonstrated one recent Saturday by a special of roast prime rib with creamed horseradish, but he has also, rather startlingly, introduced a number of items that do indeed seem suspiciously like efforts at Irish new cuisine.

Notable among these are such starters as the taco stuffed with sirloin marinated in Harp ale and the “banger” (as sausages are known colloquially in Ireland and England) with cabbage braised in balsamic vinegar. The taco isn’t extravagantly Irish, although the Harp does lend a certain lush quality to thin strips of steak, themselves considerably more luxurious than the meat that usually goes into tacos; rolled in yellow paper a la carry out, this perfectly sized appetizer arrives with salsa, chopped tomato, avocado and sour cream on the side.

However, there is a certain preciousness to the balsamico , a special, aged vinegar from Modena, Italy, that sharpens the humble served as foil to the equally humble sausage. While it is in any case a minor matter, and the dish does satisfy, it seems besides the point to fancy up what is essentially pleasant, uncomplicated fare, substantial enough to serve as a light meal in tandem with a salad or bowl of soup.

You might call the menu eclectic, since it weaves old-fashioned favorites with newer items. The rock shrimp cocktail takes the ultimate American appetizer and updates it favorably with sliced celery for texture and slices of avocado for cooling contrast to the spicy sauce. There is also the banality of crab-stuffed mushrooms with Jack cheese and onions, rather lackluster when sampled, aggravated by the presence of blackened chicken breast with Green Goddess dressing but redeemed by a spicy seafood chowder that, with the addition of tomato, saffron and Pernod, seems like an Americanized bouillabaisse.

The menu faces contemporary facts and gives much space to salads, all seven of them available in first course and entree-sized portions. Good in the starter categories are the chopped salad (greens, various vegetables, feta cheese and an herbed vinaigrette) and the Caesar, devoid of egg in the dressing but otherwise faithfully flavored. More substantial choices include salads of peppered smoked salmon with hearts of palm; shrimp with artichoke hearts and tortellini; a turkey Cobb and a grilled chicken salad with bell peppers and greens.

Contemporary themes continue on the entree list, which opens with chicken breasts (basted with honey mustard, red wine and rosemary, or stuffed with goat cheese and spinach) and progresses to such seafood offerings as blackened mahi mahi with lime-parsley aioli (you can’t say that ain’t nouvelle! ), a skewer of chili-basted shrimp with jalapenos and cilantro, and the relatively calm, grilled Atlantic salmon finished with Chardonnay sauce.

Steaks also get fancied up. The top sirloin with roasted garlic and pink peppercorns seems a little out of place in a restaurant where televisions constantly offer sports or Irish-themed films, and voices often rise in the Notre Dame fight song, but there is the compensation of another top sirloin with mushrooms, onions and parsley butter. Much can be said for the New York sirloin with Jameson whiskey, black peppercorns and brown sauce, and even more for the sirloin with blue cheese, herbs, shallots and--again--balsamic vinegar. The rich, sharp bite of this dish gives the meat a special character. Another fine meat offering is the grilled pork tenderloin, given a contemporary finish with a mix of ginger, brown sugar, soy sauce and sesame seeds.

A good assortment of vegetables accompanies entrees, as well as a better than usual selection of potatoes (this is an Irish restaurant, after all) that runs from French fries to baked and mashed. The bread basket contains both quality, crusty sourdough and superb Irish soda bread, sweet and studded with candied fruits so that it seems a delicious if premature dessert, especially when spread with butter.

Among true desserts, the list extends to apple walnut torte and a “cobblestone” pie of coffee ice cream, hazelnuts and a whiskey-caramel sauce, but these face nearly insurmountable competition from the burnt cream ( creme brulee ) flavored with Bailey’s liqueur. In its own right, creme brulee is one of the smoothest, richest sweets imaginable, but it reaches the point of the sublime with the addition of the Irish cream liqueur.

When it opened, O’Neil’s seemed likeable more as a comfortable, handsomely appointed pub than as a serious eatery, but Hill seems to have solved the problems in the kitchen and the cooking now tends to be quite reliable. Another welcome innovation is the complimentary valet parking after 5 p.m., increasingly useful in this corner of downtown.

Reidy O’Neil’s

939 Fourth Ave., San Diego

231-8500

Breakfast weekdays, dinner Monday-Saturday, closed Sundays

Dinner entrees $8.95 to $16.95.

Dinner for two, including a glass of wine

each, tax and tip, about $30 to $70

Credit cards accepted