Restaurant review: Kerry's 505 is near enough the best meal I’ve eaten this year
The interior of 505, Dingle.
9/10
One of the smartest moves I’ve made all year was to wangle a booking for newly-opened 505 on the Saturday night of the Dingle Food Festival and Blas na hÉireann awards.
For, on this one weekend, the West Kerry town becomes the centre of the Irish food universe and seats are rarer than a hen’s dentist.
Fresh from our annual pilgrimage to MT Moriarty’s, Gambler Foley, La Daughter, and I arrive into a smart yet simple space, an alcove to one side leading into a very natty bar breaks up and adds intrigue to an otherwise long and narrow room.
Turning wall space into an impromptu gallery of tastefully selected work sorts out the decor issue.
We begin with a very fine warmed sourdough, pillowy soft interior wearing a malty dark and crunchy crust, so good with butter we order another portion even as we know it might impact on appetite.
Porcupine Bank langoustine, crab, turf-smoked sleabhac (laver) butter (€16.50) sees the piscine meats combined, head meat and all, and roasted on the half shell.
They are tiny mouthfuls yet flavour lands like a Tyson uppercut, and we dredge the buttery juices with more sourdough.
La Daughter takes a first mouthful of cured mackerel, aji amarillo, pineapple, radish (€16.50) and winces with pleasure.
Does this place have a Michelin star, she asks, it should.
Teenage LD’s perceptions of culinary perfection may differ somewhat from those of a Michelin inspector, but I get her point.
Mackerel is salt-cured to a toothsome textural sweet spot, oiliness reined in by the piquant refinement of Szechuan pepper, coriander, and bergamot.
There is a pleasing tingle from aji amarillo, while brunoise of radish and pineapple furnish gentle crunch, the latter infusing the dish with intoxicating hints of tropical intrigue, more demure suggestion than emphatic statement.
Mary Walsh’s beetroots, radicchio, pickled elderberry, aged parmesan (€14) come with the option of adding smoked eel (€4), which is a no-brainer for us.
Ring’s beetroots are delightfully textured with a gentle sweetness.
Slow cooked in water with cider vinegar rather than roasted, traditional earthiness is supplanted by an ethereal delicacy, yet remain grounded in the lower register, playing off radicchio’s bitterness and elderberry’s acidity.
Lush shavings of parmesan and smoky nuggets of eel are the crowning glory.
The sauce for monkfish, mushroom, Madeira, blackberry, hazelnut (€39.50) is produced over weeks rather than hours: portobello mushrooms aged at ambient temperature until near black, then marinated in white wine and Madeira with kombu, eventually cooked down with barbecued fish bone stock and shiitakes.
The resulting concoction is extraordinary, a stentorian sweet umami that marries immaculately with chopped hazelnuts, adding layers of flavour to elemental and perfectly cooked monkfish.
Hake, pistachio, nasturtium, Goatsbridge trout roe (€35), by contrast, achieves its magic simply by having all components arrive at the same time on the same plate: Sweet fish, nutty pistachio, peppery nasturtium, and salty umami pops of roe sees skeins of flavour dancing in and out, each taking its moment in the spotlight.
Dexter beef short rib (€36.50), near sliding off the bone, arrives shrouded in a green canopy of komatsuna that has been blanched and finished with the same beef stock and miso glaze used on exquisitely cooked meat, all topped with a mustard emulsion espuma.
The bread catches up with us by dessert so we spurn what I later hear is a stunning chocolate cremeux, or Young Buck blue cheese served with a hot scone, damson jam, and walnut.
Instead, we share Amaretto Baba, raspberry, almond, meadowsweet (€13), rich sponge soaked in lemon syrup, topped with chopped almond praline, raspberry gel, and then finished with a meadowsweet custard and raspberry powder. It is sweet temptation incarnate.
Head chef Damien Ring’s life and business partner, Suzi O’Gorman, superbly marshals front of house, dressing up her laser focus in loose and easy charm.
She also curates a smashing wine list, knitting it to individual dishes and diners’ personal preferences with aplomb.
Adele (Eric Texier, 2022, Clairette/Marsanne) is a white Cote du Rhône of blousy floral and white fruit notes, but a crisp herbaceous finish ensures it works well across a multiplicity of our dishes.
Albarese, (Fattoria di Sammontana 2024) is a juicy red fruit Tuscan blend of Sangiovese and Trebbiano, immensely gluggable but with a mineral salinity that keeps it on the straight and narrow.
She and Ring did a sterling job in their previous restaurant, Kingdom 1795, in Killorglin, yet still slipped under a lot of radars: that is far less likely to happen in the dining destination of Dingle, a town with a serious reputation for food, a rep only further enhanced with the arrival of 505.
Barely three weeks open on the night we dine, this is a tight, condensed menu, three courses, three choices — if we’d eaten the other two desserts, we’d have consumed the entirety, yet each dish stands out as unique and individual, offering a wide-ranging experience.
In time, 505 will add to that menu and add further seats to the floor; 18 on the night, eventually rising to 36.
This is unquestionably Irish food, an exceptional delivery of modern Irish cooking. Ring conjures up magical flavours, then deftly deploys them on the plate, allowing the space for them to intermarry in a manner that is at times near magical.
It is near enough the best meal I’ve eaten this year, and many another year, come to that.
- 505
- Dykegate St, Dingle
- Dinner for three with wine, €230
- 505.ie
