Raining on this barbie

There's a hog on the spit but that's as authentic as it gets in the disappointing Aussie Barbecue Restaurant, writes CATHERINE CLEARY

IS IT FAIR to pass judgment on a place that serves food from midday until 5am? Are burger joints meant to be noticed? Or should they just be let fade into the furniture of a town or a city, like bus stops or road signs? They are sellers of soakage – food from four food groups: meat, fat, white baps and chips. Like service station sandwiches, they will never inspire much more than a sated burp and a silent vow to eat better the next day.

But the Aussie Barbecue in Dublin’s South Richmond Street seems to promise more. Firstly it’s not a chain restaurant. Then there is a whole hog, a leathery glazed piggie, looking up at passersby who might fancy pulled pork sandwiches. The place is claiming to be “Ireland’s only authentic Australian Barbecue Restaurant”. And when an Irish barbecue involves tongs in one hand, umbrella in the other this looks like it might be a satisfying alternative.

The Aussie Barbecue is on a fairly run-down spur of South Richmond Street that takes traffic heading up to Rathmines Bridge. There are rustic picnic tables on the footpath but it’s not an enticing space to sit and hear the roar of the 15A. It’s a hungry Friday evening and we’ve peddled and scooted down the canal to get here with three boys so we pile in. Comedian Dylan Moran’s sketch about children being “midget drunks” pops into my head as we slide into our booth and take our seats and one of us decides the best use for such a seat is to lie on his back on it with his legs in the air. The corners of the copper-clad tables are rounded and the vinyl seats with red stitching in a flame pattern are wipe clean. So far so suitable.

The other nice thing about this place is the service, which is very friendly. And the food is cheap. I’m hopeful this could be a find. Sadly it’s not. My Aussie burger, “served in a freshly-made made bap” according to the website, comes in an industrial-looking burger bap which disintegrates in my hands under the weight of the slab of deeply ordinary burger. It’s got two strips of bacon on it and some orange cheddar as well as watery strips of iceberg lettuce.

The first bite is satisfying in the way that first bites of burgers are. But then it all turns heavy and greasy as it cools rapidly.

Two bowls of boomerang fries live up to their name by repeating on us several times in the hours after the meal.

The closest description I can find to the coating on the “Tasmanian” chicken tenders is the red-brown road surface they use to pave bike lanes. These are hard, overcooked and shockingly over-salted. The “freshly baked” roll for the “snag dawg” – their take on a hot dog – is similarly lacking in anything other than the industrially-produced hot dog roll characteristics. The sausage inside is fine.

The pulled pork is okay but strangely rubbery and it’s sliced and cubed rather than the soft threads you expect from pork meat that’s so tender it’s been pulled from the bone.

All this might be forgivable if any of it tasted of barbecue. It doesn’t. And how could it? Outdoor smoke is the ingredient of barbecue, plumes of it wafting out from under the barbecue lid into the night sky, where it won’t kill anybody. Meat fat drips on feathery white-hot ash and the smoke that wafts back up through the meat infuses it with flavour. It is the smell of summer, a time machine back to long hot evenings.

But with its extractors taking the smoke safely away, this indoor barbecue gives a waft of aroma around the restaurant rather than a deep smoky flavour to the food.

The Aussie Barbecue is a cheap and cheerful burger joint, where you can fill a hunger hole at lunch or on the way home from a night out in friendly surroundings. Nothing more. If you’re looking for barbecue, in anything other than the “barbecue sauce” sense then you’ll get more of it in your back garden or on your balcony with a brolly up.

Dinner for two adults and three children with soft drinks came to €31.60.

[ Twitter.com/catherineeats ]

Bagots Hutton

Bagots Hutton is a new basement winebar in Dublin's South William Street where you can order a bottle of wine and some food, as opposed to a meal. We visited on Bloomsday evening following a group of English women stilt-walkers (okay they were just dressed in high heels and floaty silk clothes) who kept the local Leopold Blooms smiling wryly as they tottered past down the street. The place is small, tucked away and friendly with putty-coloured walls and a basement feel. We were hungry enough to order two large platters of food, a bresaola board and a small mixed board with a bottle of Zeni, a light drinkable Valpolicella. The food was mixed, brilliant garlic-marinated olives on the bresaola board (€10), meaty and soft, unlike the bresaola which was verging on shoe leather thickness.

My mixed board (€15) had some gorgeous chorizo on it, okay olives, very good cheese and a bizarre roll of what looked like luncheon meat. Maybe it's retro fun food for the 20-something customer from the days of meat with a teddy bear face.
Music was loud when we left and the place was getting busy with lots of customers being greeted like old friends. A small tweak on the food front would make this a good place when you're hungry but the last thing you want is a starter-maincourse- and-dessert kind of evening.

Bagots Hutton, 28 South William St, Dublin 2, tel; 01-5343956