Brigitte Bardot at Cannes, 1955


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IN THIS ISSUE

DINING IN DUBLIN, Part Two 
By John Mariani

NEW YORK CORNER
LAMANO and SARAGHINA 
By John Mariani

NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR
LEDE WINES AIM FOR PURITY OF STYLE
By John Mariani



DINING IN DUBLIN,
Part Two
By John Mariani

"The Fish Market, Patrick Street" (1893) by Walter Osbourne

    As I wrote a few weeks ago, Dublin has an impressive fine dining scene, but I assume visitors will also be looking for something more in the Irish culinary tradition. Fortunately, gastropubs and bistros have popped up to meet the demand. Here are some you should consider. (Just don’t ask for corned beef and cabbage.)

COPPINGER ROW
1 Coppinger Row
353-1-672-9884 

    The owners of the casual and cozy Coppinger Row, near Grafton Street, don’t brag or even explain much about their establishment on their website, letting the “Mediterranean plates, bold wines & signature cocktails” speak for themselves.  Apparently, they have been heard loud and clear, for this is one of Dublin’s overnight hits.
    Chef Troy McGuire sets a menu of six appetizers and six mains, whose brevity is expressive of knowing what he can do best with what he obtains that day (his suppliers are listed). This might include garlic and chili prawns cooked à la plancha (11.50€ or 14.50€) and delicious dressed crab and crayfish with basil, lemon and chili oil (13.75€).  Irish seafood is truly wonderful when treated simply.
    Portions are generous, and I’d certainly recommend one of the fish dishes for an entrée, like the pan-fried hake with mussels, baby potatoes and a light curry broth (26.5€).  But it would be difficult for a true trencherman not to order either the crispy pork belly with mustard mash, caramelized apples and black pudding (26€), or the salt marsh duck breast with fondant potato, pickled cabbage and Muscat (27.50€).
    Ordering sticky toffee pudding seems to me requisite in a Dublin restaurant, but there is also a selection of farmhouse cheeses to consider.         
     The best deal here is the 42.50€ fixed price dinner. Sunday through Wednesday there is an early bird dinner with two courses at 22.5€ and three courses at 25.5€ with wine additional. A 12.5% service charge is added to the bill.

Open Mon.-Fri. for lunch; weekends for brunch, Nightly for dinner.

 

 THE FRONT DOOR
15 Dame Street
677-8485 

    Of course, eating out in Dublin will inevitably drive one to more traditional fare, and while most upscale pubs around town serve decent versions of the usual grub, The Front Door, which is very pub-like up front, is less than 18 months old and quite serious about its menu.  Nearby Trinity College, it draws a young crowd; a stone’s throw from The Olympia Theater, it gets a pre- and after-theater clientele; and the place has caught on with visitors from other countries, so you get a good mix and a lot of conviviality.  The Irish are constitutionally incapable of talking to the next person over without clinking glasses.
      There’s traditional Irish music every Sunday to bolster an already ebullient atmosphere, but one that is, surprisingly, not raucously loud, as elsewhere.
    I opted to try both the first-rate fish and chips with a pea puree, tartar sauce and country fried potatoes (15€) and a hefty Irish beef stew (above) with buttered mashed potatoes (14€).
    The wine list is short, the beer list mounting to two dozen labels.

Open for lunch and dinner daily.

 

 

MEDLEY
Fleet Street East
353-1-555-7116 

    A good indication of the global reach of Dublin’s modern restaurants will be found at the new Medley, in the old Irish Times building, set on two levels, downstairs for a hearty lunch or take-out, and upstairs for events and catering. It’s been called by the local press a “bustling New York-style café bistro,” which seems to make sense.
    The highly entrepreneurial Andrew Rudd has built his career on cooking demonstrations, private catering and he is to be found on both TV and radio, with some episodes taking place at Medley.  (His mum taught him everything he knows about cooking.) It’s likely he will be coming by your table to work his charm and make sure you’re happy with your experience.
    All the ingredients at Medley are locally sourced by Chef Vincent Blake, including Irish beef dry aged for 28 days, lamb, pork, duck, game and chicken. 
    Every day there is an extensive buffet offering an array that begins with sirloin steak in a brandy cream sauce and goes on to red chicken coconut curry, charcuterie, navarin of lamb casserole and much else.  At breakfast there is potato hash with bacon and sausage; Cullen skink (a breakfast soup with smoked haddock, potatoes and leeks that is an acquired taste); and excellent artisanal breads. The wine list is surprisingly meager.

Open for breakfast and lunch daily.

  

CENTRAL LODGINGS

    After a real slump in 2008, Dublin’s hotels have started to bounce back and increase in number. Since it is not a large city, staying central is easy enough. (A Four Seasons Hotel a wee bit outside of town foundered and was turned into an Intercontinental.)  On my last trip I could not have been better located than at the boutique Brooks Hotel on Drury Street, and just a block or two from everywhere you’d want to visit, shop or dine, including Grafton and Nassau Streets, Trinity College and St. Stephen’s Green. There’s also a parking lot right across the street, which comes in handy.
    Opened  in 1996 and still celebrating its 20th anniversary, Brooks Hotel now has 100 rooms, a bright modern restaurant named Francesca’s (which sounds Italian but is more Irish, and they make a fine club sandwich in the lounge), and even a very comfortable cinema room you can rent.
    The guest rooms are commodious, the bathrooms well equipped, the WiFi complimentary, and the service staff eager to assist you with that special kind of Irish cordiality not easy to reproduce anywhere else.
        This is epitomized by the figure of Conor O’Connell (left), a tall, white-haired Dubliner who looks like  an affable version of Samuel Beckett. His eyebrows rise when he spots a new guest or a regular—eight out of ten are repeat visitors.  He is the greeter and the one who bids you goodbye, always in his concierge dark blue vested suit, his Les Clef d’Or gold pins on the lapels, and his well-tied club cravat.  Within seconds, you will be on a first name basis with Conor, and there’s nothing you can request of him that he seems not to have already anticipated, including a lot of inside info he readily volunteers, like the easy-to-miss Little Museum of Dublin.

 

 

AS FOR FISH AND CHIPS. . .

                                                                                                            Fish and Chips at The Front Door

    As a staple of food culture throughout the UK and Ireland, fish and chips, like all prole food, can be a great balm to the spirit or a real let-down. I most certainly recall in years past enough examples of ammonia-smelling fish, mushy breading and oozing grease to put me off fish and chips for good, but that was then.These days, you’ll find that Irish cooks are expending the same energies on fish and chips as American chefs are hamburgers. The key to getting the best is to go when a place is at its busiest and turn-over high.
    From what I learned, 95 percent of the fish-and-chips shops in suburban Dublin are run by Italians, for no particular reason, under an unofficial group calling itself the “Irish-American Chipper Association.”  In Dublin itself you’ll get into an easy and fierce argument as to which shop is the best, but few seem to dispute that Beshoff Bros Seafood Restaurant, with several branches,  would rank near the top of most lists. 
    “Our story begins in 1905, on the sea-washed decks of the Battleship ‘Potemkin,’” reads Beshoff’s website, “when Ivan Beshoff (right) first set sail with the famous Russian Imperial Tsarist fleet. Eight years later he arrived in Dublin and began building what, by 1939, would be the origin of a legacy that has so far spanned three generations, Beshoff Bros fish n’ chips.” Ivan died at the age of 104, but this is still proudly a family business.
    Some men were born to create beef Wellington, others to perfect fish and chips.

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By John Mariani

 Red shrimp in garlic at Lamano

LAMANO
265 West 20th Street
212-741-2398

    While Chelsea has long had a slew of good, small restaurants and eateries, like Alta Linea, Cull & Pistol and The Red Cat, it has largely avoided becoming a caterwauling hipster foodie destination like the Lower East Side and Bushwick.  Lamano is small, but surprisingly not all that loud, a very friendly and fast-paced storefront closer to a Basque-style tapas (or pintxos) wine bar than other Spanish spots around town, although here you don’t belly up to the bar to order, as you would in San Sebastián.
    Lamano is owned by Jorge Guzman Hospitality with chef-partner Mario Hernandez, who is Mexican born. From a tiny kitchen area in full view of  the tall chairs and elevated tables that encourage sharing, Hernandez works feverishly to send out dish after dish, more or less when they’re ready, and the only real problem is to avoid ordering too much. Just about everything is so savory you’ll need to prove your camaraderie by not scarfing up the food on each other’s plates.
   

    It’s the kind of place you begin with either a glass of sparkling cava or, as we did, a pitcher of way-too-easy-to-drink sangria, while you nibble on morcilla blood sausage  ($8) and boquerones (anchovies) with caramelized onions, Idiazabal cheese and garlic chips splashed with Riesling wine ($8).  The classic tomato-smeared country bread called pan con tomate ($7) is requisite—but be aware that you get a lot of bread on every dish—and then you must decide on an array of items that go well beyond what you might find in the average tapas bar:  croquetas with Serrano and aïoli ($10); marvelous and very pretty gambas red shrimps in garlic sauce ($16);  poached octopus with potatoes ($18); or course crispy hot patatas bravas ($8).
    The wine list is well selected for this kind of food, compact but all you really need, with no wine by the glass more than $12.
    It’s hard to imagine anyone leaving Lamano not feeling quite happy, perhaps with a little buzz on.

Dinner nightly.

SARAGHINA BAKERY & RESTAURANT
435 Halsey Street
718-574-0010

    Brooklyn has never wanted for good pizzerias, and the hyper-praise heaped on Roberta’s has made it seem that eyesore-ugly Bushwick eatery invented pizza. The fact is, there has always been great pizza of various stylizations all over NYC, and the endless debates about which place serves the best pie has become a tiresome cliché.
    The owner of Saraghina Bakery & Restaurant in Bedford-Stuyvesant handily proves the point, having attracted a young, appreciative clientele, with lots of kids in tow, by following a childhood dream. “As kids, we wanted to eat pizza every day,” owner Edoardo Mantelli writes on his website, “and as adults we are able to make our dream a reality and can obsessively eat (and make) pizza without reprimand. . . . We aim to recreate the food we ate growing up in Italy, the food we craved as we rushed home from school or a good soccer game, the kind of meals our mothers prepared with love and the freshest ingredients from the local mercato. As in any good Italian casa, our home was always filled with sound, but when the aroma of mamma’s cooking filled the air, we would race to the table and then there was nothing but silence. . . . We are not looking to re-invent the pizza-wheel, rather we continue on in the tradition of our mothers using a very simple and pure way of cooking and, of course, amore.”
    That’s as good a description as I could give of the atmosphere at Saraghina, which, in addition to two rustic dining rooms, has a splendid bakery and pasta shop attached.  For weekend brunch the place is packed, and the staff couldn’t be nicer about letting you know when a table will turn over, taking your cell phone number to call you in advance.
          The place has plenty of charm—whitewashed brick walls, wood beams, hanging lamps, a long communal table, and a bar-counter in front. The waiters are fast on their feet and very friendly, the noise level is moderate, and starting up a conversation with the party next to yours happens easily.
    The Neapolitan-style pizza, with ten toppings—ranging from a specialty with ricotta, housemade mozzarella, bok choy, guanciale and garlic chips ($20) to one with mozzarella, hot coppa salami, roasted spicy artichokes and basil ($17)—are as good as any you’ll find in Naples, or elsewhere in Brooklyn. The huge brunch omelets and egg specials ($11-$16), along with an array of well-made panini ($10-$15), are easy to share.  At dinner, three pastas ($15-$18) and three main courses ($28-$30) are offered. This kitchen knows just how much it can accomplish well.
    The wine list is solid and fits this kind of food to a tee; mark-ups can be reasonable or on the high side.
    Saraghina has both sauce and sass; La Saraghina (left) was the wild, fat rumba-dancing puttanta in Fellini’s film 8 ½. It’s all in fun, and you should feel right at home in what seems like Mantelli’s own tasty version of Amarcord. 

Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner daily; Brunch Sat. & Sun.

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NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR
By John Mariani
                                           

LEDE WINES AIM FOR
PURITY OF STYLE

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