Putting the ‘kitsch’ in kitchen, this is a Vintage truly worth savouring
THERE are some, but not many, things to be said in favour of recession. No doubt you will have noticed how people are nicer to each other in public, bus drivers are thanked by passengers as they alight, drivers conduct their vehicles, most of the time, with relatively calm consideration around the city.
And there are the restaurant prices. At the height of the boom, I was told off by many restaurateurs (some of whom I knew well and liked) for describing eating out in the capital as being akin to walking round a rough neighbourhood with a placard saying ‘Mug me!’.
It’s interesting now to see that Dublin offers some of the most keenly priced food in the northern hemisphere.
How has that come about? And how come that, far from restaurants vanishing from our streets, there seems to be a new and even more ambitious one opening every week?
In terms of cracking value for money, you won’t do better than The Vintage Kitchen which is close to the legendary Mulligan’s pub on Poolbeg Street.
It’s small (has maybe 30 covers), has an open kitchen in which you can see everything happen, and no wine list — but a generous policy that allows you to BYO without charging for the opening of bottle; extra chilling of bottle, in our case; or the use of the attractive wine glasses.
The vintage theme is represented by the furnishings and décor, not the food (but that mightn’t be a bad idea. Fancy an upside- down cake, anyone? Or queen of puddings? Or really good rissoles? We might be on to something here). Crockery, knickknacks, all manner of things here have people of my generation saying, ‘Oh, look, my mother had one of those…’
On the other hand, most of the clientele seemed to be under 25 when we lunched there and they probably see such things as antiques from the age before Pinterest.
The food is good. It’s also eclectic and inventive in style and very keenly priced. Starters are a fiver, mains a tenner, for the most part.
We had a fine spinach soup. Soup tends to be overlooked by most when eating out but it’s often a good measure of the kitchen.
This was light, earthy, with a foamy top which had been sprinkled with toasted, crushed It was homely and wholesome in a way that t didn’t involve dull worthiness. If you see what I mean. A weird but rather wonderful little salad, presented 1970s-style in a scallop shell, comprised a punchy combination of finely chopped chorizo, apple, shrimps, some yellow cherry tomatoes, lightly anointed with mayonnaise, which had been fortified, I think, with some chilli and lime juice.
Risotto of undyed (i.e. not DayGlo orange) smoked haddock was a triumph — and it’s rarely I can say that. The texture of the rice was perfect, the consistency was, to quote the great Valentina Harris, somewhere between soup and solid, and there was a vast amount of meaty cubes of smoked haddock. Peas offered a contrast in colour and texture and the dish was festooned with coarsely grated Parmesan. Two tiny details, on reflection, would have made a great dish sublime: a little more salt and perhaps a big wedge of lemon for squeezing over.
My daughter had a kind of selection plate. This involved spicy Romanian sausage snipped into tiny lengths, tossed in a creamy (and possibly Romanian) dressing. There was a little jar of chicken cream, a lighter and more liquid take on chicken liver paté, an arrestingly tasty combination of beetroot and black olives (a contender for my ‘spread of the year’), a ham and caper combination which was a bit like deconstructed ham hock terrine but in a good way…
It goes on. There were three kinds of cheese: a ball of creamy goat’s, a slice of goat’s brie and there was a black pepper brie of the sort that I last saw in the 1980s. And I had missed it! This was wonderfully nostalgic.
We shared the ‘half-baked chocolate cake’ (a glorious description) which had a cakelike crust beneath which it became a dense, rich, moist kind of substance which made me think that this is what Nutella probably wants to be but can’t manage it. Yes, that good. It came with a dollop of real vanilla ice cream.
With an espresso, a double macchiato and two bottles of Fíor Uisce mineral water, the bill was €47.40.