A day-time cafe on Dublin's Aungier Street now opens four nights a week serving small dishes of truly tasty food, writes CATHERINE CLEARY
FIRST THINGS FIRST. A new restaurant on Aungier Street in Dublin is not a tapas bar and it’s not a pop-up, either. It opens four nights a week, every week. (A pop-up, in my book, arrives, then pops like a bubble and is gone.) But Brioche, a day-time cafe, is transforming itself on those nights into something very interesting. It’s called (a little cringingly) Brioche Ce Soir, and is best described as a place of tiny dinners, miniature meats-and-two-veg on teeny plates for small prices. The menu is mouthwatering and I’m here with two friends to see if it tastes as good as it reads.
The food is classic French cooking and the chef is Gavin McDonagh, whose CV includes the kitchens of L’Ecrivain and Guilbauds and a stint as sous chef at Shanahan’s on the Green.
My two friends are the only diners in the place when I arrive. It’s a pleasantly painted wood-panelled room with a high ceiling. The day-time food and coffee machines are to the front of house. Behind our table, a lace curtain gives the impression of a little French parlour, a good room into which Madame only invites special guests. High up there are small glass lampshades. Tables are simple, wooden, un-linened and decorated with fresh flowers. Chairs are textbook bentwoods.
The menu has a variety of dishes they call “tasting plates” – the most expensive we order is €8. All wines on the short list are served by the glass. The waiter explains that the plates come to the table when they’re ready, rather than as starters or mains, so we order two each and relax.
The food is full of great well-cooked flavours. A chef in a bigger restaurant could happily put them on larger plates, wipe the white space around the food clean and slap on a larger price.
I get a small bowl of orangey mussels with a “chef’s sauce”, which is a saffron cream with finely diced red peppers. It’s delicious, although a few of the top mussels are a little overcooked.
The next dish is salmon “with a twist”: a horseradish-marinated small cutlet that has softened to a delicious pink, with a sweetly pickled cucumber and gorgeous small chunks of beetroot.
There’s also a small plate with two perfect seabass fillets balanced on marinated tomatoes, peperonata, artichokes and a basil butter.
An excellent duck liver pate comes in a salt-cellar sized spring-top jar with a layer of fruit relish at the bottom and tiny toasts on which to layer it. The only slight disappointment is some very ordinary bread which is more batch than I would have liked.
Another round brings a rectangular plate, a little larger than a bookmark, with a line of piped mustardy mash, an apple gravy and a cube of rare-breed pork belly that looks like a fat sandwich. It has crisp skin, layers of soft fat and a seam of the sweetest pork in the middle. It’s just a few mouthfuls but they are great.
A daube (stew) of beef cheek is served as a small cube with a cube of potato gratin. The meat is boot black on the outside and brown silk inside. A small bowl of good celeriac remoulade comes with it. We get a side of roast baby spuds with a blue cheese sauce, which are a little undercrisped but fine. And I switch from a glass of the house Pinot Gris to a Shiraz for the beef.
There’s a pretty and delicious cheese plate (€6.50) which has enough cheese to share and two fluffy pancakes dusted in icing sugar and dotted with fresh fruit and mint leaves to finish.
Brioche Ce Soir proves the point that small amounts of good food are very satisfying. Give me a small plate of something truly tasty over a vast platter of forgettable food and I’m a happy eater.
We like things in boxes in the restaurant world: posh, casual, tapas, formal. This place doesn’t really fit into any of them but if you like the French bistro supper experience in small tasty bursts, it’s a find.
Dinner for three with five glasses of wine was €91.
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Frozen to the marrow
I can add courgette-killer to my list of gardening mistakes this year. I brought four plants to life indoors, including two miniature varieties with gorgeous neon pink seeds. But I planted them out too soon. Despite swaddling them in fleece they were skinned alive by the north wind.
Ne'er cast a clout (or put a courgette out) till May is out, it seems. I consoled myself with a bowl of courgette and basil soup in Nelly's recently. This small and beautiful food shop and cafe on the South Circular Road does a good lunchtime trade and the day I called they had put the summery ingredients of courgettes and basil into a tasty and cockle-warming soup for €4.50.
Sharing a €2.50 brownie with my youngest son, perched (occasionally) on his comic-book decorated stool, I was able to look around the oak shelves and get ideas for dinner and baking projects from the produce around us.
You can also sit in the window and watch the north wind batter people down the South Circular Road.
Nelly's, 12 South Circular Road, Dublin 8, tel: 01-4734775
