Dish

For a long time Dish was probably the best and certainly the friendliest restaurant in Temple Bar; a place where those fortunate enough not to be caught up in new dynamic Dublin could linger over lunch or dinner. A totally hassle-free experience, it was not unknown for certain diners of my acquaintance to hide away there all afternoon, putting the world to rights, sipping Chardonnay, chilled out and philosophical until they noticed, if they noticed, that the place had started to fill up again.
Re-reading the review in the March 2000 issue of the magazine we noted a concise menu, smart dining room, French dominated wine list, meat “flavoursome beyond belief” and compiled a tick list for our trip to Dish Mark 2. The restaurant has long since escaped from the Land of Hen Parties to a D4 location in the premises that for many years housed Signor Sassi’s.
Bangles and I had the pre-prandial chez moi. A couple of glasses of chilled Laurent Miquel Viognier, my latest bibulous squeeze. Then we took a taxi to ‘Leeson Street Island’. We were pleasantly greeted and, after a short debate, given a window table in the front section, definitely the ‘where it’s at’ part of the dining area. The outmoded colloquialism is deliberate – Bangles and I were at various times both party to the London phenomenon. Sit down in Dish, half close your eyes and you could be back in Corney & Barrow’s wine bar, circa 1992, sipping fino with successful traders, political PR persons and last month’s celebs. What was cutting edge is now mello-retro. Would the food be the same?
My companion and I are both experimental fundamentalists, so no need to delineate between ‘his’ and ‘her’ starter. My (slight) sense of guilt at consuming birds tiny as quail evaporated as I speared a midget leg and rolled it round in the unguent jus bourguinon . Crisp green beans made a fit and proper accompaniment. The crisp pork and ginger wontons came with ‘napa slaw’ a term with which neither of us was familiar. This proved to be shredded vegetables swaddled not in unsubtle mayonnaise but in a delicate Thai-inspired dressing. Both starters were outstanding in their concept and execution. With them we demolished a basket of bread, two types excellent but the third had clearly been baked, let’s be charitable, very early in the day. Also a bottle of Alsace Riesling “Muhlforst’ 2000 from Dom.Jean-Luc Mader which had entered that dormant period that much good Riesling seems to go through. We were in no doubt of its quality, though.
We had a long discussion with the waitress about the yellow fin tuna. She left us in no doubt that the chef would prefer us to eat it seared on the outside and rare within. Our attempts to negotiate proved fruitless. Indeed there was little actual searing and the interior was rare-to-raw. You couldn’t complain about the portion – if the menu had said ‘house brick of sushi’ it would have been a more accurate description of what arrived on the plate. It came with an enervating smoky bacon chutney and a lovely fragrant citrus rice cake.

Big was definitely a theme. When my Barbary duck breast arrived at table I asked Bangles whether she’d had a boob job. The duck, that is. But the joke was on me. The meat was tough, chewy and tasted of absolutely zilch. Like Monty Python’s parrot it was a dead duck, a rubber duck. Or was I eating silicone implants? I raged and thirst raged too. We had another bottle, why not, no one was driving, a Barbazelle Cottanera Rosso 2001, a hefty Sicilian, tough as the duck but much nicer, with robust Nerello Mascalese softened by a judicious admixture of Nero d’Avola. The “mainly French” list was clearly a thing of the past.
There were no vegetables with the entrées. We paid e14 extra for a goodly portion of superlative crispy onion rings, a bowl of anorexic chips so huge the contents were cold before you got even halfway down and a small portion of asparagus with truffle butter that tasted more of garlic than of truffle anything or even asparagus. This last was waste of money. We shared a panna cotta for dessert, a good one but not a great one, gelatine a little too evident.
So, some brilliant, some good, some not so good. We had a long conversation a few days afterwards with chef proprietor Ger Foote. He’d already taken the tuna off the menu while he rethinks the dish. Adaptability and the willingness to listen to customers and take constructive criticism on board is the trademark of a good professional and Ger is certainly that. The restaurant is committed to Feile Bia for its meat and poultry. Staff are cheerful if a little too partisan when it comes to representing the chef’s take on ‘when done is done’. The wine list is exceptionally interesting, given that there are only around 30 bottles, and reasonably good value. Unlike the previous reviewer, I can’t comment on how frequently they change the menu as I only Dish it occasionally. Flipside is, the cooking seems a little inconsistent at the minute though they are clearly capable of great things as the starters showed. They should incorporate the veggies, sans truffled asparagus into the entrée, too. Lastly, I think Dish cries out for a hands-on maître d’ to say “whoa!” when staff get too truculent.
Dish 146 Upper Leeson Street, Dublin 4 Tel: (01) 664 2135