`Dish" sounds like just the right name for a restaurant, but it is just one of the details which has been achieved with aplomb by the owners of Dish, a new restaurant on Crow Street, in Temple Bar, just a dander off Dame Street.
The other things they have got right are, crucially, the food, and the service, and the music, which is unequivocally the slickest, smartest, sassiest selection of classic tunes I have ever heard. Any music buff who relishes timeless hits, from What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted to Andy Williams' crooning Can't Get Over Losing You, will want to linger in Dish.
The music sounds like it is much-loved by whoever recorded the tapes, and indeed Dish has a very personal, proud stamp about it. The room is simple - long, lean, with exposed ducting and a see-into kitchen at the far end - and has served as a restaurant under various guises for many years. And, while it is foolish to predict the fate of any restaurant, especially in a season when new openings occur almost weekly, I sense that Dish may be around for some time.
The food, the atmosphere, and the lack of contrivance make it easy to like. I liked it. My guest liked it. Even on a quiet Wednesday evening, in the middle of dinner, we were planning our returns, figuring out how much we might enjoy Sunday brunch, or the wellpriced lunch menu.
If the restaurant is youthful, the menu and the cooking show experience and wisdom. Divided into Appetisers, Salads, Sandwiches, Pastas and Mains, it is a mix which announces a very democratic intention, allowing you to spend £6.95 on a classic Caesar salad or grilled chicken breast on rye with ginger-orange mustard, pear and blueberry chutney, or £13.95 on chargrilled organic fillet steak with a walnut blue cheese butter, caramelised yellow pepper and sweet onion compote and french fries.
My starter of pan-fried calamari with a warm lime and coriander chilli vinaigrette had slender rings of squid, alongside a salad of rocket and radiccio. The squid was just right, and the vinaigrette had those urgent kick-in flavour notes which tantalise the mouth, aided by slivers of mild chilli among the salad.
This was excellent, but it paled beside the thunderous Dish crab and sweet potato cakes with orange braised fennel and arugula salad with basil essence.
Fish cakes are, like creme brulee, chocolate mousse and Caesar salad, one of those dishes which separate the culinarily meek from the culinarily mighty.
These were so good that one imagined they had been confected, not simply created. Light as air, the sweet crab meat teaming up magically with the sweet potato, they were offset by a terrific salad. I cannot for the life of me think how this dish could be made better, except perhaps by using the term "rocket", rather than "arugula" to describe the leaves. We have successfully ditched French terms from our menus, so let's not start importing Italian terms.
Main courses showed the same astuteness when balancing flavours and textures. South East Asian chicken and shrimp stirfry with lemongrass, ginger, spiced cashews and Szechuan pepper gave a lovely composition of flavours, with the spiced cashews an especially clever note. This was accompanied by a side plate of steamed Thai rice, just the right anonymous partner for a very richly flavoured main course with authentic flavours.
I ordered the steak, smitten by the promise of a piece of organic beef sourced from John and Mark Downey's butcher's shop in Terenure, and it made for a classic steak dinner, in which all the individual details piled on more pleasure. The kitchen had shown time and respect to what was, in effect, that old warhorse of steak with blue cheese sauce and chips, but their revision of the dish had made it light while still retaining the essential richness of such a noble collection of flavours.
Desserts of caramelised lemon tart and rice pudding with Armagnac sultanas were enjoyable, but missed the finesse of the savoury cooking. The tart could have been somewhat lighter in texture, the rice pudding creamier and more melded.
Anywhere else, and the desserts might have seemed fine, but Dish is setting its own standards for modern, eclectic cooking. There is a sharpness about this operation which is wholly laudable, explained perhaps by the fact that owners Trevor Browne and Gerard Foote (head chef) have both lengthy tenures in the Elephant & Castle behind them. Dish has adopted that accessible, spontaneous, motivated style, creating friendly food in a smart space and opening all day every day, from 11.30 a.m. to 11.30 p.m.
It has a special lunch menu at £8.95 which offers a selection of the dishes from the dinner menu, and a Sunday brunch menu.
Dish, 2 Crow Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2 tel: 01-6711248, fax: 01-6711249 Open 11.30 a.m.- 11.30 p.m.