Welcome to a Dax return that nobody minds filing
DAX RESTAURANT 23 Upper Pembroke Street, Dublin 2 Phone: 01 676 1495, visit dax.ie
DURING the darker days of the lockdown I thought a lot about restaurants to which I wanted to return, even just in imagination.
It almost became a kind of mental game. I thought about the queen o’ puddings (and the wine list) at Andrew Edmunds and the waiter at Oslo Court who always says (to everyone) ‘I’ve kept you some X’ — both in London.
And the 24-carat French cooking served in the elegant, 19th century interior of Alain Ducasse’s glorious Aux Lyonnais in Paris. I even recalled a meal eaten in Jared Ingersoll’s late, lamented Danks Street Depot, a long time ago, in an edgy part of Sydney. And then there was a little place in Calais where I ate giant whelks with Richard Corrigan on our way back from a pilgrimage to the heart of Burgundy. And, gosh yes, the €15 lunch menu in the Dame Tartine in Beaune...
They were just the overseas ones. I frequently dreamed of Chapter One in Dublin and I promised myself that, as soon as possible, I would have lunch in Dax where the combination of Graham Neville’s cooking and Olivier Meisonnave’s instinctive hospitality combine to create a restaurant to which I want to return time after time.
Last time I was there, quite a while ago, had been with Ed Schneider who writes on food and travel for The New York Times, Washington Post and Huffington Post. He, like me, loved it. And so it came about that I eventually got to go back to Dax for lunch and I can report that it lived up to both expectations and memories. A big ask, as they say.
Marinated North Atlantic scallops were served ceviche style, raw but ‘cooked’, in the sense that flesh was firmed up a little, by a gentle pickling in lime juice, the acidity of which was assuaged nicely by a little crème fraîche.
While this was very much ‘fine dining’ (and how I hate that phrase!) our other starter was heartier in appearance: two little wedges of the exceptionally creamy Brie/Camembert tribute act that is Ballylisk cheese from Co Armagh. The richness here was cut by little pickles, the crunch of which provided a good contrast in texture that was further enhanced by buckwheat crumbs.
Before the mains arrived we were treated to some raw bluefin tuna, cut so thinly you could read through it, which had been anointed with what came across as what I can only call essence of tomato. And not just any old tomatoes either.
Loin of free-range pork from the Salters’ family farm near Fenagh in Carlow, was a kind of celebration of the pure pigginess you get only from such carefully nurtured pork. Cooked to the point where it retained a suggestion of pink, and thus deliciously moist, it was paired, very traditionally, with buttery summer cabbage and the grainy, sharp counterpoint of Pommery mustard. Skinned, neon-green broad beans added much more than colour.
With the other main course, I have never come so close to licking my plate as when I had cleaned off the last vestiges of the rich,
thick, almost startlingly intense bisque that it had once contained. It also had contained two large courgette blossoms, plumply stuffed with Dublin Bay prawn flesh, the whole dish suffused with the gentle scent of lemongrass and ginger. French beans with garlic crumbs and a little pot of mash that contained what Marco Pierre White considers to be too much butter and I regard as just enough, completed the picture.
Lunch was completed with a lovely little fruit tart with excellent thin, buttery pastry, and a selection of cheeses (from Sheridan’s) that were all, naturally, in perfect condition.
Why naturally? Well, there is a sense of being looked after here. I was trying to remember a quote from someone who said that one can’t imagine anything unpleasant happening in somewhere or other. Possibly Fortnum & Mason’s or the Savoy. Well, Dax is like that.
THE SMART MONEY
Our three course set lunch was €39 per person, a bargain for cooking at this level. And you can have four courses for €48, which is even more so.
AND ANOTHER THING...
My grandmother’s sister used to live just across the road, and one of my earliest restaurant experiences was when she brought me, aged about ten, to The Grey Door, which was upstairs in this very building.