Da Enzo (and the Musings of a North Sider) (closed)

For somebody who aims to eat out as often as I do, you’d think I grew up surrounded by restaurants and visiting them from the day I could walk! As it happens, this couldn’t be any further from the truth. For one, I only began trying new places to eat in for a hobby some five years ago. It’s a good enough time-span in which to build up an appreciation for cooking and the restaurant industry but not a lifetime’s experience. The other is that I live, and always have done, in Beaumont; a small area at the heart of a culinary desert (not dessert, down foodies!) that seemingly covers a lot of what the locals like to call ‘dee Naarth soyid’.

Think for a moment about all of the best restaurant hotspots in Dublin.

Done?

Okay.

The city centre is a given, and I’m sure a few of you thought of Dundrum, Blackrock, Ranelagh, Dun Laoighre, Rathmines, Dalkey and so on. Coastal regions like Clontarf, Malahide and Howth excepted, how many areas could you think of that weren’t on the South side? I can say with years of certainty that you won’t find anything better than a chain of takeaways in Beaumont, whilst there isn’t much excitement to speak of in the surrounding Coolock, Artane or Ballymun. Further afield you have Killester, Raheny, Donaghmede and Finglas, all of which are simply no match for what some of the city’s more vibrant dining areas. Strictly speaking on foodie terms of course! There is a healthy collection of cafés and one or two evening restaurants in close proximity to each other as you near Drumcondra, but at that stage you’re getting to within walking distance of the city centre, not to mention being a few doors down from one Bertie Ahern’s residence. Just to give you a better idea of where the area I'm referring to starts and stops, here's a picture parading my wicked Google Earth skills:

The reality is that I’d be surprised if many of you named any of the latter areas listed, if one on the North side outright! Neither do I blame you; all of the above locales suffer from a comparative dearth of any exciting, modern restaurants. The occasional long standing but run of the mill Italian bistro will punctuate a street every few miles, but nowhere will you find something to compare with the dynamism of Dublin’s current food scene darlings, yet alone a collection of them. The gaping void that’s left is filled mostly with chippers, Chinese takeaways and McDonald’s, give or take an Eddie Rockets in a couple of shopping malls. If you need any proof short of personally driving around and searching for a reputable place to eat, look no further than Menupages for some rough statistics. It doesn’t represent Dublin’s eating scene in its entirety, but a quick add and subtract job reveals that there are approximated one-hundred and thirty reviewed restaurants in and around the areas I’m talking about, as opposed to the one thousand or thereabouts you’ll find in the direction of Dublin City Centre and the South side. 

In a nutshell, there’s a lack of good restaurants or general foodie destinations in and around where I live and, for the most part, it’s always been that way. That’s not to say there aren’t any places to eat outright; our Indian takeaway certainly isn’t the worst by comparison, but we have little to go by in the way of sit down eateries that you’d actually walk away from looking forward to the next visit, if indeed you find one to visit at all! So, you can understand why we greet any and all new arrivals with not only excitement, but a hefty dollop of cautiousness. Da Enzo – a curiously placed Italian restaurant sitting on top of a paint shop and crèche – is one such example, and although it did everything possible to look like the kind of restaurant you should avoid, it was only a matter of time before I cracked and gave it the benefit of the doubt. Never judge a book by its cover, right? Or a restaurant by its menu... Actually, scratch that and I’ll get back to you with a batter food analogy!

Rhetoric aside, the good news about Da Enzo was that it gave Rebecca and me plenty to discuss afterwards. The bad barely needs explaining; terrible food, a completely dead atmosphere and prices that flatter to deceive. Highlights included the dying plants on each window ledge, pictures of sushi on the fish menu page and, best of all, an electric pepper mill that not only grinds on command but also shines a spotlight onto your food! Speaking of which, you don’t need any more than summaries and a few pictures to tell where it all went wrong: 

Soggy, tasteless bruscehtta on a ciabba- sorry, cuisine de France roll; chewy chunks of plain chicken masquerading as a starter; ravioli cooked into a sloppy oblivion and oozing enough truffle oil to literally make you feel ill; the list continues ad nauseum, but there’s very little reason to spend any more than a few lines on discussing how Da Enzo gets it so badly wrong. No, my main concern is more to do with the potential influence it has on the locals of an area that offers little else in the way of proper dining alternatives.

Now I know what you’re thinking:

“but Rob, Dublin’s a small city and it takes only five minutes to walk from one side to the other! Surely one or two mediocre restaurants aren’t going to end up being the sum total of a north-side Dubliner’s eating universe?”

To which I would say that you’re absolutely correct; it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the majority of Dublin’s population spends as much time commuting to the city centre or beyond as I do, which is effectively almost every day I have to spare at this stage! Business or pleasure, we all do it. Nonetheless, working for a couple of years in Finglas and Donaghmede has made it quite clear to me that a vast collection of frazzled parents, nonchalant pensioners and generally unadventurous inner North siders find it difficult to follow suit, either by design or circumstance. When I suggest in work that they head into town to find a more specific DVD or CD, half of the time their faces will be painted with a look of disgust that implies I’ve just asked them to carry a cross all the way to Calgary! Normally I laugh at reactions like that, but after visiting Da Enzo it got me thinking about everything in food terms. Essentially, what you have is a number of people who live in the aforementioned North side ‘culinary desert’ who are either unable or simply don’t want to travel far enough to eat in any of Dublin’s restaurant hotspots. If they instead prefer to stay close to home and try the local eateries, what they’ll more than likely experience is something that falls far short of what the city’s best and brightest have to offer.

The part that I find particularly hard to swallow is that for a lack of any good, local alternatives with which diners can compare, restaurants that fill the gap like Da Enzo can not only afford to continue rolling out poorly executed food, but also charge prices that are vastly disproportionate to the quality of what you get. Most of their pasta mains hit in and around the fifteen euro mark; equivalent to, or more expensive in some cases than what you might find in Nico’s of Dame street, a reliable and well respected Italian restaurant in and amongst Dublin foodies. Of course, this is exactly the kind of establishment I’m referring to when I talk about what a lot of unknowing North siders are missing out on, both in terms of vastly superior food and the money you ultimately save!

Just as bad is that for all intents and purposes, Da Enzo presents itself as being an authentic ‘Italiano Ristorante’ (which is incorrect ordering, right?) with flowery descriptions detailing how traditional and wholesome each and every single item on the menu is. Anyone with experience in eating out would see right through this kind of wordy veneer before the food even arrived, but to the everyday, once-in-a-while diner it might as well be a ringing testimonial. And who can blame them for thinking so?  There doesn’t appear to be one restaurant in all of the North Dublin City areas I’ve listed that comes anywhere near to serving genuine Italian fare, yet alone any other

At the end of the day and despite the ins and outs of immobile or unadventurous locals, the mouths of North siders from Finglas across to Killester are there to be fed, no different to those of Dun Laoighre or Ranelagh. If any given type of restaurant were to open in a convenient location therein and serve reasonably priced food cooked with just a little bit of love and passion, then I have no doubt that it would be just as successful as any or all of Dublin’s current favourites. What is there to suggest otherwise? Like I’ve always said, food is one of the few things that unifies absolutely every person on this planet, regardless of race or caste. Appreciation for genuinely good food in Dublin is not something that disappears entirely once you cross the Liffey, and there’s a vast amount of potential in all of the unfilled spaces up there. Modern Irish, Indian, authentic Italian, Mexican; each a style of food that as of yet has little to no good quality representation on the inner North side, each a prospective goldmine for anyone gutsy enough to try and introduce them to an altogether deprived group of people.

Of course, all of the above is simply an ideal. The reality is that anybody looking to open a restaurant with serious intent in the way of genuinely good food will automatically feel inclined to target the existing demography and locate in and around the areas that are already bursting with culinary options. The Catering industry is, as things stand, a risky business to be starting up in and it's easy to understand how the added element of venturing into the largely uncovered territory of North Dublin City is enough to put most burgeoning restaurateurs off, yet alone experienced ones! What you have left are those who look to exploit the situation, and this unfortunately appears to be the trend that is set to continue. Only last week I discovered that a restaurant/café called D9 will be opening just around the corner from my house. As always, I'm optimistic and will definitely give it a try, however the ever-present cautiousness remains. So, here's hoping for a pleasant surprise and to be able to say that for once I have my very own good, local restaurant.

Da Enzo
25G, Sunnyside,
Malahide Road,
Artane,
Dublin 5

Tph: 01-4420013

http://daenzoitalianrestaurant.ie/home.php

Nico's Restaurant

A picture says a thousand words. When there’s food involved, they have the power to get your stomach talking as well! Food photography has developed massively in recent decades, a lot of focus (pun unintended) having shifted from representing exactly what had been cooked in a defined manner to making the food in question look as tempting as physically possible. Depth of field has become a necessity, lighting and setting arrangement; even post work is more than often applied to make that sauce just a little bit more colourful. There are times when you can almost taste the photograph, be it an extreme close up of hot, bubbling lasagne or a sweeping shot of a market cheese stand. I’m what you’d probably call a (very) amateur food photographer; I can use a camera, understand the importance of colour balance when you have a red napkin in front of a white bowl filled with orange liquid and of course, the actual setup of a scene but it’s an area unlikely to be ever something I’ll become overly rigorous at. A quick, decent shot is all I need in most cases, one that strikes a simple balance between showing you everything that’s on offer and making it look just a little bit more than edible – AKA, desirable, particularly when I’m eating out; there’s no point in giving deserved praise to a dish and producing a shoddy photo to back up your words with.

So, when Darcie and I arrived at Nico’s on Wednesday evening and I realised I’d forgotten my camera, I felt both annoyed and, well, kind of excited to be honest! Annoyed because I wouldn’t get to show off to you in pictures what this little Italian restaurant can serve up, excited at the chance to persuade you not with pretty colours but with only what I can write. It may not be quite a picture’s thousand words, I may not even reach five hundred for that matter. But if it gets you through Nico’s door and into one of their seats then my job here will be done.

On that point, passing through the door is an experience in itself! Dame street: one of the city centre’s largest, busiest roads. Nico’s is located at the George’s street junction. It’s loud, it’s hectic. You step inside and as if almost by magic you’re not only transported to an island of quiet and calm, but an altogether grand room that has the look of a classy 1950’s New York restaurant! Soothing world music piped in overhead only further suggests that Emilio Cirillo, Nico’s director, is on a mission to sedate the Dublin masses, fully aware of how exactly his location ought to be used. Given it had taken Darcie and I less time than we thought to shop for soup ingredients, we arrived quite early and had the entire place to ourselves for the best part of a half hour. On closer inspection, the unmistakable Italian nature of Nico’s begins to shine through: drawings of Venetian and Roman architecture adorn the walls and the waiters on hand spoke quietly to each other in the native tongue. It’s no secret I’d been looking forward to this visit for some time, almost as long as the restaurant itself has been around for! And that’s a long time, Nico’s is one of Dublin’s oldest restaurants. The decor, the live piano in the evening and the presence of an good, old fashioned prawn cocktail on the menu all point in the direction of a lingering history about the place. However, none of it ever gives you the impression that it’s gotten caught in a time loop, unaware of itself. Not least the food, the eating of which was left mostly to me all evening. Don’t mistake that for a complaint.

Whilst Darcie waited for dessert, I started with Nico’s antipasti platter and for the mains, ravioli doppio burro (a meat ravioli in a heavy cream sauce with pepper). What impressed me about both of these dishes was the relative lack of any extravagant presentation yet their almost perfect execution. The antipasti included parma ham, salami, sautéed mushrooms, black olives and a good helping of creamy provolone cheese, all drizzled lightly in olive oil. Italian restaurants (in their vast numbers throughout the city) will often serve you a platter of cured meat, such as this, drowned in olive oil and nearly inedible. Nico’s, however, gets it just right. The mushrooms were also a nice touch, and underlined the ethic of fusion with Irish ingredients in their cuisine. My meat ravioli was no less enjoyable, and one of the most well balance dishes I’ve ever eaten. Despite the sauce being described as both heavy and creamy, it never once overpowered any of the other flavours. In every bite you got exactly what was described: pasta, lightly spiced minced meat, a thick, creamy sauce and pepper. It was all there, not one element went AWOL. Well, after about ten minutes the entire dish had, but what did they expect with food that delicious? I finished with a tiramisu which delivered the added firmness in the Italian lady fingers I’d been crying out for, whilst Darcie had a fluffy gateaux that I really should have stolen more of.

In total, the bill came to just under fifty euro for a three course dinner plus one dessert. It was a bargain for having tried the main course alone, not to mention that Nico’s menu is filled with a great selection of pasta dishes under the fifteen euro mark. Just as we got ready to leave, the legendary piano man I’ve heard so much about arrived, on cue as predicted. If I had one regret, it’s that we didn’t get to stay to hear more of him. With food this good, he’ll have to be the third reason I’ll come back. The second, of course, being to take a picture or two.

Nico’s Restaurant
53, Dame Street,
Dublin 2

Tph: 01-6773062