Frank’s, Dublin: Fast, great casual food at my new favourite restaurant
Delicious food in a former Camden Street butcher’s – with a surprisingly reasonable bill
Here’s a beautiful idea: a talented chef with a couple of days’ prep in his back pocket stands at a pan and cooks delicious things, including one dish that has you day-dreaming about it a week later. You sit feet away and when the food is ready it is put on a plate and handed to you. At the end, a bill comes that is surprisingly reasonable.
“When is the Frank’s review going in?” my husband will ring to ask just as I start writing, like some telepathic trigger has sent a panic alert to his brain. We want to hug Frank’s to ourselves but they prised it from my greedy grip. Bag open. Cat gone. Our new secret favourite place shared.
You need to get to a stool in a former pork butcher’s shop in Camden Street. There are no bookings taken in Frank’s. It’s a wine bar with a counter in the window and one high polished Corian table flecked with glass the colour of barley sugar, with a row of stools lined up on either side. The panelled walls and ceiling are the bottle green of my old school uniform. The last remnant of old Frank’s is the shop sign over the door and the tattered burgundy awning as grubby and unglamorous as the interior is sleek. In the window, Frank’s logo features the chequerboard design of chefs’ trousers.