It's been well over a decade since food magazines started celebrating Ireland as a culinary destination, with Ballymaloe Cookery School and the restaurant scene in Kinsale grabbing headlines and gaining international reputations. When you think about great Irish cooking you think about exquisite local ingredients; fresh seafood, grass-fed beef, rich dairy products. You think tradition. What about foreign food? Can Ireland's culinary scene transport you to other shores?
In the case of Italian food, I'll offer a vociferous si! as I tell you about Osteria Lucio, as good as anything I've had in Italy. In fact, it's as good as both Locanda Locatelli and Murano, my two favourite ... and Michelin starred ... Italian restaurants in London.
We'd been unsuccessful on the waiting list for Chapter One, the Michelin-celebrated restaurant that chef Ross Lewis founded. He stepped back from it last spring just before the restaurant gained its second star. Reports say he was weary of the day-to-day grind under the culinary spotlight and decided to put his efforts into Osteria Lucio, which he'd had an interest in for years but hadn't concentrated on. So, ironically, we got a touch of the magic we were seeking without even realising it. I knew nothing about Lewis, or the Chapter One connection until after our meal; but every colleague I talked food with said that this was the best restaurant in the docklands. How right they were.
Great Italian food is often simple, relying on extraordinary ingredients and cooking methods that coax essential flavours to extremes. It makes you pause in wonder, asking how a tomato, or a mushroom, or a bit of cheese could pack that much of a punch. At Lucio, it was a peach.
My companion started with a roasted peach sat beside an egg of burrata, with a bit of red vermouth dressing below, a dab of rocket pesto and some rocket sprigs scattered across the top. From the look on her face as she took her first bite I knew there was something special going on, and a shared taste confirmed it. I've never had a peach more, well ... peachy ... than that one, warm and soft on the inside but still holding its shape. A perfect, explosive sweetness against the cream of the cheese and the bite of the dressing and pesto. It was perfection. And only perfection could have kicked my own starter into second place. Perfectly cooked, thinly-sliced octopus alternating with equally-sized disks of warm potato, complemented by black olives, tomato and parsley. Like the peach and burrata combo, this was all about balancing flavours: sharp and sweet, rich and light. My friend detests olives, yet admitted they worked beautifully here.
We moved on to home-made pastas, though the suckling pig for two was tempting and the pizzas coming out of the wood-fired oven looked fabulous. I went for paccheri (short, fat tubes) with lobster, courgette, basil and chilli. Lobster pastas can be hit or miss, given how much can go wrong. It's easy to overcook the lobster, or overwhelm it with other flavours, or lose it completely in the bulk of the pasta. No such problems here, as the local king of shellfish was soft, firm, full of flavour and clearly dominant on the plate. The paccheri added bite, balance and substance. On the other side of the table, some of the prettiest ravioli I've seen formed flowers on a ground of mushroom sauce.
We couldn't resist dessert. Our waiter's favourite was the unusual lemon posset, another miracle of balance between the sharp citrus, smooth dairy, rich pistachio ice cream ( a fine addition!) and sweet strawberries. We also tried the tiramisu, something I rarely do in restaurants because I've rarely had one as good as the recipe I use at home. Mine is labour intensive, with alternating layers of a fussy zabaglione and whipped coffee cream, so impractical for restaurants who consider this an easy mass catering option. Lucio didn't use that zabaglione layer, but the balance of coffee, cake, chocolate and cream was far more sophisticated than the average.
In addition to great food, Osteria Lucio has a fun atmosphere. It's in one of the few older buildings standing amongst the gleaming offices of the docklands, and its main dining hall snuggles beneath one of the arches of the suburban train line. It's a cozy retreat from the world outside and will be my first reservation the next time I head to Dublin.
The limited timeline of that second visit means we were limited to burgers. That was no sacrifice as they were exemplars of the art: a juicy meat feast, loaded with extras, local cheese bringing bite to the richness of the protein. And if you don't like thick, crispy, perfect chips, then you can opt into addictive fried shoestring potatoes.
Earlier in the week we'd had the time to range more freely through the menu, including succulent local oysters with home-made Guinness brown bread, haddock arancini (more Italian influences dressing up what's essentially a tasty fishcake) and grilled duck. We'd also spent time at the bar pre-meal, where the bartender delighted us with a range of local gins and mixers we'd never encountered. They also have a really interesting wine list and staff who will work through it to come up with interesting choices.
This is another place I'd want to book well in advance of another trip to England. Especially if that trip were for a rugby. Unlike American football, you can accurately predict the end of a match, and it will probably be early enough for a long, leisurely dinner. The Old Spot would be the perfect place to celebrate an English win, or be consoled about the Irish victory by their fine food and hospitality.
No comments:
Post a Comment