There has been The Devlin (I never knew Ranelagh was missing a boutique hotel until this place opened!) which offers food in their rooftop restaurant Layla's or the American Bar on the ground floor. Hobarts closed but reopened as Scoff with Gigi's going in next door.
However, the restaurant I was most excited to visit is the very recently opened Rita's which I had heard serves top class pizza. We were out in Dun Laoghaire where we went on the vintage Ferris Wheel from Grease and on the way home we decided that we would pop in to Rita's "for a slice" ....or even a pie!
Rita's is in a central location in between Kinara Kitchen and Host Restaurant (in the old Bow and Pearl location) and it is nicely decorated with cool stencil work on some of the walls. ** EDIT - Rita's is now relocated to the old Brioche location on Elmwood Avenue Lower in Ranelagh Village (across from Lidl) ** It's got a great atmosphere and when we visited it was packed with a great buzz in the place. It is small and cozy and of course it's got a great big pizza oven in the restaurant.
Once we were seated we got down to the business of ordering our pizza. The menu is interesting and included some pizza toppings that we had to google before we ordered. For info, Nduja is a spicy pork salami!
I ordered a pizza with blue cheese on it. I love blue cheese and this pizza did not disappoint - it worked well with the glass of red wine that I ordered too. Ciaran went for the pizza with nduja and also scamorza cheese which he washed down with a couple of bottles of Peroni.
The pizza was really superb - beautifully cooked, thin base with a soft doughy crust around the edge. We ordered a portion of garlic dipping sauce which was perfect for dipping the crust in to. These are seriously good pizzas.
Rita's certainly is an asset to Ranelagh and I hope it does well. It will appeal to all and is perfect for big groups who are looking for a fun reasonably priced meal or couples out for a nice bite to eat. It will be sure to prove popular with families also. If you visit, let me know!
The above pic is the huuge pizza oven where they cook those pizzas at 500 degrees!!! That's one hot mama of an oven!
