Hakkahan is the best kept secret in town – until now!

Is there a sense of dèja vu? If the name Hakkahan rings a bell, it’s because I reviewed it in these pages back in October 2021, and very favourably too. I fell in love with this no-frills, commonsense Sichuan restaurant in the heart of Dublin 7. So much so, that I returned there for the annual Christmas outing that I have with one of my oldest friends. There are not many restaurants – at least ones that I can readily afford – of which I can say that.

But, no, I have not gone back to Hakkahan because of a hankering after the kimchi dumplings or the Basil Duck – no relation of Mr Brush – that seduced me first time around. No, but the bush telegraph that operates among those of us who like to keep a finger on the pulse of Dublin food indicated that

Hakkahan had introduced a ‘secret menu’, ie, those dishes that only the true followers of the restaurant, most of them Chinese, had hitherto known about.

This is telling. There’s a generosity of spirit about Hakkahan, a kind of missionary impetus, a desire to spread an appreciation of the good things that they do.

They are not afraid to present the said secret menu to Europeans, mercifully in English but with gentle warnings; as our charming waitress said, these dishes are ‘very oily, salty and spicy’.

Well, that sounds like my kind of meal, was my response. Bring it on.

Having ordered, we fell into conversation. Had I had such dishes, before, I was asked? I mentioned Sichuanese chilli beef, a kind of soup with beansprouts and a shocking amount of bright red chilli oil on top and depth charges of dried chillies below. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘We do that one!’ I know what I’ll have next time. This is a dish to release copious endorphins and deliver a remarkable sense of well-being, provided you’re not averse to a fair amount of heat.

Anyway, the secret menu, unlike the main one, is not available online at the moment. You just request it and you will be handed an A4 sheet of delights.

From this, we chose – with some difficulty as we knew our limitations – just three dishes.

On another occasion we might have had the pig’s ear (gelatinous and melting, I reckon) or the intriguing pig’s trotter ti hua tang (with ginger, barley, lily buds and butter beans). I’d pass on the pork kidney with black fungus and other elements as I’m not an offal enthusiast, but I’m told it’s very good if that’s your kind of thing.

If it is, you might also consider huo bao fei chang which involves unspecified ‘pig offal’. You can even have the same offal with sea bass in the form of fei chang yu.

No, we went with the very conventional-sounding spicy pork ribs (€15), but what a revelation these were! Piled high on the plate were immaculately tender ribs with dry chillies, Sichuan pepper, onion, fresh chillies, ginger, scallions and lao gan ma, which translates as ‘crispy chilli oil’. This was electrifyingly full of flavours and packed with chilli heat, a composite tingling delight.

There was guan guo chicken and prawn too (€16), which featured fried potato along with ginger,

THERE WAS ZING AND THERE WAS TINGLE ALLIED TO A WHOPPING SAVOURINESS

garlic, scallions, dried chillies and slivers of cooling, but cooked, cucumber. Again, there was zing and there was tingle allied to whopping savouriness, almost a sensory overload.

Another new one on me was the combination of prawns and chicken together – the latter was in crisped little nuggets of meat, just the right size for chopsticks.

Sizzling fresh squid was a combination of peppers, garlic, ginger, dried chillies, Sichuan peppercorns and little baby squids, each of them firm to the tooth and almost nutty. At this stage we were so satisfied that we searched with our chopsticks for the seafood element, withdrawing little delicious mouthfuls one at a time.

These were just three dishes from a menu of 27 that for most diners – or lunchers – are definitely way beyond the usual suspects and outside the comfort zone for many. As such, I salute Hakkahan for spreading the good news about Sichuanese cooking.

It may be very hot, very salty and quite oily but all in an absolutely delightful way. If you want to be challenged, and have a reasonable tolerance of chilli heat, I can think of no better destination than the secret menu at Hakkahan.

But will it remain a secret? As it comes on a printed menu and as news is travelling rapidly, it won’t.

But most customers will be perfectly happy with the main menu – and there’s very little conventional to that too.

All hail Hakkahan! Beat a path to its door, is my advice.