It’s shaping up nicely... half-moon parcels of pasta filled with porcini

I’VE developed a visceral hatred of Starbucks. I’ve hated their coffee from the very start, the ludicrous serving sizes, the blandness, the corporateness, the frightful food and the pretence of folksiness.

I loathe the fact that they push out independent cafes that are struggling against the odds to survive while doing the decent thing and struggling with the soul-destroying demands of the environmental health officers who want everything to be pre-sliced, pre-packed and virtually pre-digested.

Perhaps most of all I detest the inevitable onward march of the blots on the landscape that are Starbucks. Leave a building alone for five minutes in a prime retail location and when you return it will be a sodding Starbucks.

Thoughts like these were raising my blood pressure as I walked along the main street in Blackrock the other day. I’d noticed that the old post office, a fine early 20th-century building, is no longer infested by Starbucks and is for sale (nice spot for a proper restaurant, by the way) and that the pale excuse for coffee dispensing has moved up the street where it’s now opposite the entrance of the Blackrock Shopping Centre.

Thank heavens that while Starbucks spreads like verruccas in a municipal swimming pool other enterprises are growing too. Step forward Dunne & Crescenzi, a small empire that started in a newsagent’s in Sutton many years ago and which last month saw the latest outlet open its hospitable doors here in the heart of Blackrock.

There were 50 Starbucks in Dublin when I last looked; this is the seventh opening under the aegis of Dunne and Crescenzi. So there is hope.

If anyone can make this Blackrock site work, it’s Eileen Dunne, Stefano Crescenzi and their son Ghinlon. It’s not an easy one. It defeated the wildly ambitious Clodagh McKenna who painted it pastel blue but south Dublin just didn’t have enough yummy mummies for her particular schtick.

On our lunchtime visit, however, it was interesting to see the breakdown between the sexes in the new Dunne & Crescenzi. I reckon the clientele was 90% female, perhaps rather more.

Not that it matters a jot. People come because this is real food. Not pre-cooked. Not out of a microwave. This is real, skilled cooking.

We shared a brilliantly simple, wholesome and generous starter of mozzarella that was so creamy it was almost burrata, with plenty of prosciutto di Parma, rocket, tomato and as much of the delicious, green, peppery olive oil, a bottle of which stands on every table, as we liked.

And then to pasta in the form of panzerotti. And I stress the pasta version. These are little half-moon parcels made of pasta and filled, on this occasion, with porcini; they are not be confused with the panzerotti which are a first cousin of the calzone pizza, the one that’s folded over to contain what would otherwise be the topping. Earthy, mushroomy, rich and finished with truffle oil and fluffy Parmesan, it was as simple as it was good.

Agnolotti – I think, but my knowledge of pasta shapes is not encyclopaedic – were smaller parcels containing, on this occasion, minced Parma ham, intensely savoury with a nicely al dente resistance and came on a bed of chickpea puree which seemed to have been flavoured with lemon and garlic. On top it was deceptively red, owing its colour not to the tomatoes that we all expect too much in Italian food, but to nduja, the pastelike and slightly spicy salame that breaks down and becomes quite liquid on cooking. This was a complex dish – and the special of the day – the very antithesis of what passes for pasta in so many restaurants.

A single pudding of ice cream encased in an outer layer of lemon sorbet, served in one of those old-fashioned silvery coupes, with a measure of limoncello liqueur poured over it, was decadent, nostalgic and suprisingly delicious.

The bill, with wine, coffees and lots of mineral water was just over €100.