The Pig's Ear listens to what diners want – and gets it right at every level. Definitely worth the trot into town, writes CATHERINE CLEARY
ONE OF MY favourite jokes from the BBC parenting sitcom Outnumbered is when a policeman remarks that assaults with frying pans got much more serious when middle class households got Le Creuset. Tonight’s dinner has just arrived in one of these lethal weapons, a small white enamelled cast-iron frying pan. It takes a while to notice the brand name because what’s in the pan is so dramatic – a portion of brilliantly coloured stuff that looks like outrageously purple porridge. In a time when we eat with our eyes, and our iPhones, here’s a plate of food that might just warrant a quick snap.
It’s been an evening full of pleasant surprises. A dreaded pre-dinner dash to Argos was completed in minutes, allowing just enough time to swoop on a €10 Cos dress in a nearby Oxfam. The universe has oiled the cogs of my evening and I’m serenely on-time when I climb the stairs to The Pig’s Ear on Nassau St.
When you ring to book a table here they don’t play hold music. Instead Storybook Lady narrates the tale of the three little pigs in a primary-colour voice designed to make you listen. It’s cute but leads me to think they may be over-egging the pig thing. Thankfully, that’s not the first impression when you arrive. At a time when so many places try to make you feel like you’re eating at granny’s, The Pig’s Ear feels like arriving for dinner at your gay granddad’s. It’s a handsome upstairs room. There are Aran cardies hanging on chi-chi hooks and a view of the treetops of Trinity. The Dublin evening sunlight is pouring through the sash windows on to the dark wooden floor, bentwood chairs and wooden tables.
The €24.95 early bird set menu (clipped to a board with a wooden clothes peg) is a simple three starter, three mains, three desserts option. Sides are an extra €3.95.
It checks all the boxes of traditional “Irish cooking”. There’s champ and ham knuckle, but there are also modern takes on brilliant Irish ingredients.
Róisín gets a citrus-cured organic salmon to start, and it’s wonderful. A small mound of crunchy brown breadcrumbs seems to have had lemon zest added. There are soft just-formed lumps of buttermilk curd, adding a delicate tang, tiny balls of compressed cucumber and a dill and cucumber relish around two generous pieces of luscious salmon. My starter, from the pig canon, is a pork and ham knuckle terrine with chunks of gherkin pressed into the generous cylinder of pink and beige pigmeat. A “chopped-egg dressing” is a line of egg mayo with still-warm toasts.
Mains get better still, with Róisín’s pan-fried hake arriving on a beautiful glazed duck-egg green plate. It sits on top of good champ with a cauliflower puree, melted butter and toasted almonds. There’s a small sprinkling of samphire, which could have been more generous, and some “potted shrimp” that have been freed from their pot and sprinkled over the dish.
My main, in its own white enamelled frying pan, is a deep cerise colour that beetroot gives when mixed with cream. This risotto is made with large spelt grains, more swollen than rice, all the better to soak up the flavours. On top there are wafer-thin shards of raw fennel. Toasted pine nuts add their warm crunch to the texture. It’s a delightful dish on every level. We choose wine by the glass, going with the nettle-fresh Loire Sauvignon Blanc Lombeline (€6.95 apiece).
Desserts are stylishly presented. A delicious plum trifle arrives in an inverted dome in a perspex cylinder. A bready brown-bread ice cream comes with chunks of “Yellowman”, or honeycomb. It’s a nordy name, apparently. I’ve since heard it’s called “hokey-pokey” elsewhere. Excellent coffee and a mint tea are served with sugar in a turned-down waxed Siúcra bag and milk in a stoppered bottle.
In anxious times it’s easy to absorb the tensions of a place like a sponge where things are not being done as they could or should be. The test of a good night is leaving a restaurant more relaxed and happier than when you arrived. The Pig’s Ear passes this with flying colours. “It’s so great to go somewhere where they do everything right,” is the consensus as we head out into the last of the sunshine.
Dinner for two with three glasses of house wine, tea and coffee came to €76.65.
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Ho-hum at Yum
My favourite fake restaurant opened briefly on Dublin's Camden St recently when the Raw crew were back to film more exterior shots for the RTÉ drama.
A real new restaurant also opened in the shape of Yum, a stylish-looking posh burger joint just down the road. A chalkboard of good-sounding salads and friendly service gave a good first impression. Unfortunately, the food that followed didn't. A pulled pork sandwich was just an unmanageable large bap stuffed with indifferent meat and accompanied by an unpleasant salad of pungent goat cheese coated greasily over watery whole cherry tomatoes. "The classic" burger (€10.95) was a good piece of meat with thyme included in the burger but was served with horribly oversalted chips. Best of it was probably the Reuben (€10.95), a slight variation on the corned beef, melted Swiss cheese and sauerkraut classic but well executed. It's early days so maybe it will get better. But at the moment, Yum? More like ho-hum.
A family dinner for two adults and three children with three beers and soft drinks came to €62.20 Yum, 87 Camden St, Dublin 2, 01-425 1122
