Eileen Dunne and Stefano Crescenzi started a quiet revolution with their new style of Italian restaurants. Tom Doorley tracks their rapid progress.
There has been a quiet revolution in Italian food in Ireland. The red sauce joints, which kept us happy in the dark old days, are flagging. And while there's nothing wrong with a really good spaghetti Bolognese or a crisp-based pizza without sweetcorn and pineapple, we know now that Italian food goes way beyond these boundaries.
We can claim part of the credit for this ourselves. A lot of Irish people have eaten in Italy and marvelled at how good food doesn't have to be dear. But the people who have done most to open our eyes to this at home are Eileen Dunne and Stefano Crescenzi, the husband-and-wife team behind not only the Dunne & Crescenzi restaurants, but also Bar Italia, La Corte, Nonna Valentina, and Officina at the Dundrum Town Centre.
Eileen is a Dub who grew up in Pearse Street, while Stefano is from Rome and is a former economist. They opened the first Dunne & Crescenzi on South Frederick Street, Dublin 2 in November 1999, and it was described by the New York Times as "a classy little Italian joint" with "unpretentious brilliance." Since then, they have opened a second branch on the same street, one in Sandymount, and a summer opening branch at Farmleigh.
Add to that three branches of La Corte, two of Bar Italia, Officina and Nonna Valentina, which is in the premises originally occupied by Thornton's in Portobello. That makes 11 restaurants in six years, with another one due soon.
The business partnership between Eileen and Stefano Crescenzi started in 1995 when they returned to Ireland and opened a newsagent in Sutton.
Eileen had spent 19 years in Italy prior to this homecoming. "When I was a teenager I desperately wanted to go to art college, but my family simply couldn't afford it," she says. "I had an aunt who worked in Rome and she told me that I could study art there - for free. So I went in August and when the course started in October, I had a bit of Italian." In time, she married her first husband, a sculptor. "With two artists in the family we could barely afford to eat, so I ended up in a desk job at the UN in Rome."
It was at the UN that she meet Stefano, her second husband. "He did all the cooking," she says, "and I've never met anyone who has such a passion for good food. Eventually he suggested that we go to Ireland, with our three children, and open a restaurant. So we exchanged our good, solid jobs for the newsagent in Sutton." Partly because they found the newsagent business was not their cup of tea, and partly because Eileen wanted to move back into the city centre where she had grown up, they ended up opening their first restaurant in South Frederick Street.
"We wanted it to be casual but also deadly serious about food," she says. "We wanted the food to be what the Italians call "curato", properly sourced and cooked and nurtured. And we decided that we had to know all of our suppliers personally, concentrating on small producers." The result was new to Dublin: part wine bar, part cafe, part deli. "You don't get all that together in one place in Italy," Eileen says. "But it seemed like a good idea." And so it proved. Meanwhile, Davide Izzo, who had a deli in Chatham Street and is credited with introducing panini to Ireland, joined forces with Stefano to open both La Corte and Bar Italia in 2002. Stefano manned the kitchen at the first Bar Italia, near Capel Street bridge, and wowed the customers, including this one, with his pasta and gnocchi.
Then Powerscourt Townhouse Centre management approached Eileen and Stefano and asked them to open a Dunne & Crescenzi, and it eventually opened as a La Corte. The Neapolitan chef there likes to specialise in fish. "This is what makes each restaurant different," says Eileen. "It's not a formula. It depends on who's in the kitchen. People are always saying that we should franchise, but we want to control standards, control the whole experience."
While the first Bar Italia was, and still is, tiny, the second one, just north of the Liffey, came about because Stefano had always wanted to have a proper trattoria, with a genuine buzz. "It was a big departure for us," says Eileen. "A 100-seater restaurant is a different kettle of fish, and it took us a while to get it right, but it's thriving now after almost two years.
Nonna Valentina, named after Stefano's grandmother, is very much his restaurant in terms of the concept. It specialises in the kind of hearty Roman dishes which he ate growing up, and several items, including the gorgeous torte di patate are from his granny's handwritten recipe book. "I love that kind of food," Eileen says.
Eileen and Stefano make regular trips to Italy. "When I look at what people are eating there," she says, "I often think we do a lot of things better. We're into regional, traditional cooking that has a sense of place. Food in general is good in Italy, but you don't always get the real thing. This is what I'm really proud of in our restaurants."
The Dunne & Crescenzi philosophy seems to be based on the idea that real Italian food is more immediate, less interfered with, than French. "I don't like all this aspiring to Michelin stars," says Eileen. "I hate 'tall food' and sauces from squeezy bottles. I want to go back to basics. Good oil, good wine, good cheese."
The food of Lazio, the region around Rome, is special for both Eileen and Stefano. "You wouldn't think I had been a picky eater as a kid," she says. "I love what the Lazians call 'interiors' and we'd call offal. Veal liver just flashed in the pan with a bit of balsamic vinegar, calves' intestines cooked in milk, tripe, oxtail . . ." Not surprisingly, she loves Fergus Henderson's temple to offal, St John, in London. "I'd go to London just to eat there," says Eileen. "And to eat at The River Cafe. Those two women [Rogers and Gray] have done something wonderful there. It's the emphasis on superb fresh produce and then not doing too much to it. The begrudgers give out about the prices, but Italian food doesn't get any better than this. Even in Italy. In fact, The River Cafe is better than most restaurants in Italy."
An exception, she says, is Cibrèo in Florence, where the owner sits with the diners to explain the menu. "There was an amazing starter when we last ate there," says Eileen. "It was stuffed chicken neck, like a sausage really, with the head still on. Just my thing.
"When we visit Italy we really notice how the economy is in shreds, thanks to Berlusconi," she says. "But the upside for us is that lots of young Italians come here to improve their job prospects by learning English, and that means we've no problem getting Italian staff. And Italian staff create an Italian atmosphere, an authentic feel."
Whatever it is that Stefano and Eileen have created, it certainly sells. A new Bar Italia will open soon in Ranelagh; Officina in Dundrum is due to open any day now, and there are plans for a bakery. "You can imagine how much bread we get through," Eileen says. "It makes sense to bake our own." And there's a cookery book in the offing, too. "We're not building an empire," Eileen says. "If we were, we would have all the restaurants under one name. We're just enjoying building a business based on real, individual restaurants. That seems to be what people want." u