Circa burst onto the Dublin dining scene in spring 2019 with flair and intent. Opened by four friends, the cool dining room, fun vibes, slick service and exciting cooking saw them become an overnight success in Terenure, quickly finding favour beyond the neighbourhood. Since then, General Manager Ross Duffy and Restaurant Manager Dylan Jacobs steered Circa successfully through the Covid years with a sure hand and a flexible attitude.
Darryl Haynes took over Circa's kitchen in 2020 and has demonstrated a continuing focus on seasonality, beautiful ingredients and elegant, pared back presentation. Menus change regularly and Circa's popular take-away menu, Circa @ Home, helped keep the creativity flowing in the kitchen during lockdown restrictions. A summer starter might feature creamy burrata in smoked tomato broth with aged balsamic while winter menus offer hearty signatures like game pithivier with confit duck, rabbit, guinea fowl, quince and walnut wild mushroom wellington with manchego or cote de boeuf with dillisk or veal with shallot, shitake, mayan gold and kale.
Vegetarian dishes are original and there are always good seafood choices like cod, parsnip, truffle, chicken skin and Madeira.
Circa's brunch menu is especially imaginative and is renewed every four to six weeks with creative choices like fish tacos, duck confit with sauerkraut and pomegranate on sourdough bread and crispy eggs on mushrooms cooked in a bone marrow butter.
Service is perfectly pitched, with great engagement from friendly and helpful staff. Cool tunes play from the speakers and the heated and covered garden is a lovely space to dine and linger.
The dining room is bright and open, with well-spaced tables and a photo-perfect marble-topped bar sporting a large vase of fresh flowers, where there is some extra seating.
There is plenty to love about this modern, fun and hard working neighbourhood restaurant and Haynes's cooking, which always showed ambition, has now matured in a rhythmic flow of interesting and at times challenging food. Circa is a restaurant for people who like to be surprised and think about the flavours at play on their plates. It is intelligent, conversation-starting food.
