I’d expected Baba’de, Ahmet Dede and Maria Archer’s more casual follow-up to their acclaimed two-Michelin-star restaurant, Dede in Baltimore, west Cork, to focus on Turkish street food. It does – but there are also rogue dishes at incredibly reasonable prices. You’re as likely to get seafood in a fine dining foam as a kebab on flatbread.
The setting is the old Mews site, where Dede formerly held a Michelin star as head chef – a 30-seat cottage a few steps from their two-star flagship. The mood is stripped back: bare tables, a short menu split into sea, meadow, garden and dessert, and a wine list that starts at €35. We go for the entry-level red, a chilled Bobal from Valencia (€35) that works across the summer menu. Celebrating? There’s a grower champagne, Pierre Moncuit Coulmet, and a strong showing of by-the-glass options.
Dede’s içli köfte (€16) is about as far from its street food roots as you can get without a wine pairing. If you’re sniffy about foams, rethink your position. The yoghurt-garlic sauce is whipped to the brink of collapse but hits with refreshing acidity. On top: dots of isot pepper and fresh mint leaves. Four bulgur dumplings surface – crisp spheres above the froth, sealing in spiced lamb. And under them – because this dish doesn’t stop – is a slow-cooked ragout of Fastnet Farm lamb, thick with tomato and heat. Layered, precise, and technically sharp – it is influenced by a two-star signature dish from Dede, served here for the price of a Negroni.
Dede’s hand shows again with the squid erişte (€15), another dish that arrives under a blanket of aerated sauce – this time a whipped roast pepper velouté, a vivid orange, fizzing at the edges like embers. It comes in a black bowl, dusted with chives and isot pepper, topped with a single curled piece of baby squid.
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Beneath, tagliatelle-style pasta is cut short to match the thin strips of squid running through the sauce. Traditionally, the dish uses offal – not seafood – and never a red pepper base. But of course it works. Puffed rice, almond crumble and pomegranate molasses pull it squarely into cheffy territory.
After two composed, high-wire plates, the menu shifts gear. Ali’s hummus (€8) comes topped with crispy chickpeas, red onion and smoked paprika and house-made sourdough. In Turkey, hummus is eaten straight with a fork, like a vegetable side dish, but I fancy it as a dip, so order more of the bread (€2) to swipe it up.
The Adana kebab (€16), a thick sausage of grilled lamb, lands on a charred flatbread, streaked with chilli mayonnaise, pickled beetroot and yoghurt. Pickled onions and torn herbs lift the richness, while the bread soaks up the juices. It’s satisfying. You ditch the cutlery and just dig in.
A rival plate of chicken shawarma (€11) feels almost polite by comparison: barbecued chicken breast, smoky and succulent, spread across another flatbread, topped with garlic yoghurt, sumac and a dusting of crunchy chicken skin.
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It would be enough to offer just the hits – a signature from Dede, a knockout Adana kebab – but the menu keeps moving. Baba’de-style fried chicken with brown butter dip lands at the table beside us. Cured haddock with seaweed dashi, and cod with confit leeks (the most expensive dish at €23), are making the rounds for fish lovers. The langoustine spring roll seems particularly popular. There are dishes for people who want fireworks, and others for those who just want to be fed – children, anyone not up for lamb ragout in a yoghurt espuma. One plate looks like a tasting-menu showpiece, the next a weeknight favourite. Somehow, they all belong.
Dessert is annemin sütlaç (€13), billed as “mother’s warm rice pudding”. It’s a bowl of warm, loose sütlaç with a scoop of cold brown butter ice cream and a dusting of crushed nuts. It’s restrained, with rice that’s soft but not overcooked, and a punch of brown butter to finish.
This is modern Anatolian cooking, structured around a Nordic-style menu layout, with quietly cheffy execution and a top-tier prep kitchen doing the heavy lifting. It’s a lucky dip in the best way – bewildering at times, with no telling whether the next plate’s a two-star throwback or a late-night classic.
Still flinching at the word ‘espuma’? Stay home and eat yoghurt with a spoon. Otherwise, get to Baba’de – the food is bold, the prices are ridiculously reasonable, and you won’t eat like this anywhere else in Ireland.
Dinner for two with a bottle of wine was €116.
The verdict: 9/10. Fine dining meets Turkish comfort food at Ahmet Dede’s latest restaurant.
Food provenance: Glenmar Fish, Anthony Dwyer, Michael Twomey and Walsh’s butchers, and David Bushby.
Vegetarian options: Oyster mushroom shawarma, wild chanterelles with mushroom consommé, bulgur köfte, and fennel, goat’s curd and beetroot salad.
Wheelchair access: Accessible room with no accessible toilet.
Music: Modern Turkish pop, rock and jazz mix.
