There’s a misunderstanding being discussed at the next table. “When you said tapas bar I thought you said topless bar,” one guy says. This chimes a bit with what’s happening at our table as we read a truly tempting menu and wonder what a duck leg bikini might be. It’s Spanish slang for a toastie, the waiter explains. The friend is vaguely disappointed. She half hoped for a duck to appear in a bikini.
We're in Boqueria, a new restaurant in Stoneybatter. Chef Matt Fuller cooked for years in Spain, was head chef in Conrad Gallagher's Salon des Saveurs on Aungier Street and several good hotels. Now he has opened his own place. They call it a tapas bar. I'm not certain it is, but let's tether up that horse and get back to that bikini.
It’s four quarters of a sandwich of crisply fried batch bread topped with white asparagus spears and filled with confit duck and sweet red onion. It’s a bend nearer the plate to get every morsel and the least cheffy of all the dishes we eat. I like it a lot. It’s the only kind of bikini for which I’ll always be ready.
But it stands out like a gentle cart horse in a field of slightly more jumpy thoroughbreds. Every other dish feels less tapas rustic and more fine dining on smaller plates. In Boqueria, named for the famous Barcelona food market, nothing looks like a casual snack you’d find to go with a drink. Tapas were born with the genius idea of putting mouthfuls of food on the saucers drinkers were using to keep the flies out of their fino.
But here even the drinks try hard. “What’s that pink drink,” the friend asks? She’s of the “see, want, get” school. “It’s probably the most original Bellini in Dublin,” we’re told. Right so. A raspberry sorbet arrives in a glass with a plump whole raspberry on top, next Cava and a raspberry syrup are poured over it with the kind of mixologist intensity that nearly needs a lab coat and goggles. Then, in a rush, the sorbet floats to the top to turn into chewy bubbles, a booze slushy.
The food is also something of a performance. There’s a hot black bowl of the pinkest cured Goatsbridge trout pooled in a pale green fennel soup topped with raspberries and halved blueberries. This will not be the last fish and fruit combo of the night. There’s another plate with tiny cubes of mango.
In between there are dots of pistachio emulsion (a word found only in paint shops and Masterchef scripts) and grated pistachios. The main event on this plate are pieces of tuna which have been carefully cooked but coated with a grated pepper that's so punchy it obliterates both the fish and fruit flavours. There are pig cheeks and vanilla potatoes with chargrilled pineapple and fresh spinach leaves. Beautiful as it looks, the pig cheeks are surprisingly hammy so our tastebuds go on a seventies time travel trip to gammon and pineapple for tea.
The cheffiest moment is, of all things, the “barrel chips”. Your brain inserts an “of” in that phrase and you picture a vat of fried potatoes. What you get are dice-sized cubes of triple-cooked potatoes between lines of spicy red sauce. Each crispy cube of potato heaven is dotted with a piped squidge of roasted garlic mayo. On a slate. They’re terrific and the last one is as good as the first. It’s a Buddhist sand picture of a dish, painstakingly plated only to be obliterated in an instant. Move over patatas bravas here is patatas poshus.
Desserts are another highlight. A Valhrona chocolate mousse imprisoned between two lightly sweetened bread thins with sea salt on the top and a drizzle of olive oil is eye-rollingly good. A basil and strawberry soup is a beautiful bowl of basil three ways: gel, emulsion and slushy with a yoghurty strawberry soup poured over it. It’s the lesser of the two desserts, a little too much basil tipping it into pesto territory.
Boqueria is not perfect. The decor has an office supplies sale feel to it, the jazz hands being zany coloured upholstery on the chairs. Prussia Street is nowhere near as romantic as it sounds. And (here I feel like the wicked witch of the west given the heart that’s being put into the food here) they appear to have a damp problem. I like my tapas bars to smell of garlic and gambas rather than bedsits and basements.
But even in its early weeks it’s already difficult to get a table. It’s an ambitious neighbourhood restaurant serving up excellent ingredients and Dublin’s best chef’s take on chips.
Way better than a topless bar any day of the week.
The verdict: 7.5/10 Some resounding hits and a couple of misses
Facilities: Fine
Music: At least one Spanish guitar number
Food provenance: Good. Goatsbridge trout and Macroom buffalo ricotta
Wheelchair access: Yes
Dinner for two with those Bellinis, four glasses of wine and a bottle of water came to €106
Second helping
Eimear Reynolds was in a class of just 30 people in the baking and pastry arts course in the DIT in Cathal Brugha Street. Then a new TV show called 'The Great British Bake Off' arrived and the numbers rocketed.
She went on to set up cake company Bakealicious. She uses organic spelt flour, butter, rapeseed and camelina oil and free range eggs. Her summer hit is a pistachio, rosewater and raspberry cake.
You can find her at markets around Cavan and Meath or at the Bakealicious Tearooms in Sheridans headquarters at the the Old Virginia Road Station. bakealicious.ie
