SOLE Seafood & Grill — Restaurant in Dublin

Beautiful restaurant on a happening street in Dublin. Found SOLE after looking for a more upscale, seafood-centered dining experience. Lovely indoor dining room with ambient lighting and chic decor. Being greeted by a cooler with steaks actively being dry-aged and a tank full of live lobster helps add to reassurance that you will be served using extra-fresh high quality ingredients.

The food is absolutely fantastic. The menu claims all of their beef can be traced directly to its origin within the country and it shows. Carpaccio, while a relatively small portion for the price, was some of the best I’ve had. The potato and lavage soup featuring chive and pesto tasted so fresh. The scallops (Coquilles St. Jacques) were absolutely plentiful and meshed beautifully with their Gruyère cream and mash accompaniments. The sea-bass, while also a relatively small portion, was extremely fresh and served with perfect accompaniments.

The cocktail list was impressively expansive with tried and true favorites, and slightly more unique up-scale fancily garnished craft concoctions. The backbar was also impressive, and special shout-out for having every label and its ounce pour costing within the drink menu. The wine list was MASSIVELY extensive making sure to have something for everyone, although a little bit too marked up when you know the retail prices of some of those bottles.

Now, the only thing leaving you wanting a little bit more was the service. Upon entering the host was not very warm and inviting, which is fine, but that’s every guests almost first impression. Others have complained about the exploitative pricing of the bottled water at the table, but thank goodness they do it that way, because the pace of service is just simply really slow. I’m okay with hanging out for a long time but when it takes 20 minutes from sitting down to getting your first sip of wine it makes you grow a little impatient. Also, a busy Saturday night, and our waiter made sure to keep our glasses full once the wine finally came, but there was no checking in by anyone throughout any point of dining. For an experience that is going to cost hundreds of Euros and prompt for a tip at the end I would’ve expected a little bit more of a personable experience from the waitstaff. Flagging down team members for bills or more drinks doesn’t seem like something that should happen at a place offering a several hundred Euro tasting menu.

Overall, it was an above average experience due to the ambiance and the food. I would definitely return just maybe on a weeknight when it’s...

I - I'm speechless.

To begin with, the food was amazing. It's tasty (and not only by Dublin's standards!), it's skillfully made, it's creative.

But oh, the food is just the beginning! If not usual, it's not exceedingly rare for me to eat food I can only describe as amazing, either. Yet never before have I walked out of the restaurant thinking, feeling, like this. Sole left an impression on me. It opened my eyes.

What this place had to offer would go unseen by most. Few, but possibly more than those who recognize the greatness of what happened under their noses, would criticize it for what i praise it for. But if you can appreciate this review, you may be the type of person who needs to pay and do whatever you can to experience dining at Sole.

I'm a bit afraid to write this review down, because the Everything of it all feels almost like a spell, something mystical, something beyond Words, and if I bring it to words, maybe it all disappears. It permeates the place, you only see flashes of it in the details, it is concrete like the arch holding the ceiling of the place up, it's like a veil you could cut down by directly looking at it.

And what to say of it all? You won't find what I found, least of all if you go looking for it. I entered expecting to eat a great meal, and that I did, abd somewhere along the ride I realized I was a part of the greatest piece of performance art to ever have come into existence by what I can only assume was a pure accident.

This place has a creative vision behind it. This place has a truly unique atmosphere. This place has a Soul. Was it all a hallucination? Was it like a cloud that, for a moment, seemed to show a face or some truth about the universe? Is this really the nature of this place - can I return a year or a decade from now and experience this again? Maybe not. Maybe I'll experience something else.

The only restaurant...

We have been coming to SOEL every year for the past four years, and it used to be a highlight for us. Sadly, this year’s visit was so disappointing that it has completely changed our opinion of the place. From the moment we arrived, everything went downhill.

We checked in at the door and were told our table would be ready shortly. The host even pointed out the table we would be seated at. Instead of bringing us in, we were asked to wait outside. After 20 minutes of being ignored, we finally walked back in ourselves only to find that the very table we had been promised was already taken by someone else. No explanation, no apology, nothing. That set the tone for the night.

When we finally sat down, the service was some of the worst we’ve ever experienced. We received the wrong oysters, and nobody came to check on us or notice. Staff were completely absent unless we went out of our way to flag them down. The scallops were chewy, the steak arrived raw, and when we asked how it was cooked (charcoal, grill, etc.), the waiter simply shrugged and said, “I don’t know.” That exact response — “I don’t know” — happened more than once while we were trying to order. It felt like the staff had no training, no knowledge of the menu, and no interest in helping.

Every single dish we ordered was a letdown, both in quality and execution. What used to be a special meal now felt like a complete waste of time and money. There was no attention to detail, no care in the cooking, and absolutely no sense of hospitality.

This restaurant has gone from being somewhere we genuinely enjoyed to a place we will never return to. The entire experience, from start to finish, was frustrating, careless, and frankly embarrassing for a restaurant that once had a good reputation. Truly one of the most disappointing dining experiences we’ve...