Dublin: Foodie flash mob
POP-UP restaurants are a whizz idea. Although hardly new, they chime with the times, combine the casual buzz of a dinner party with the thrill of a one-night-stand, and karate chop right through our cosy pairings of food and rooms.
They’re like foodie flash mobs. Think of Dublin’s Supper Club Project, Stephen Gibson and Matt Perry’s UpDn, or kamikaze, now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t guest chefs like Giles Clark (of the Young Turks), who cooked recently at the Cake Cafe.
When L and I got a table at one of the most talked about pop-ups of 2012 then, we were ready to jump right on the bandwagon. Belgian chef Yannick Van-Aeken and Irish pastry chef Louise Bannon (who cut her teeth in Thornton’s and Mint), have worked for years at Noma, the Copenhagen restaurant heralded as the world’s best. Following pop-ups in Galway (Kai) and Cork (Ballymaloe House), they hit Dublin in December.
The venue was Urbun Cafe, a stripped-back, semi-industrial space in the southside suburb of Cabinteely. It’s a cool cafe, with splashes of colour — be it the salads, compotes and macaroons, or the staffs’ t-shirts and trainers — bouncing off exposed concrete, sackcloth cushions, wiry lights and long, communal tables.
With Yannick + Louise at the helm, Urbun promised to transform itself — for two nights only — into a Michelin-quality experience. A tasting menu was pitched at €80pp, similar to what you’ll pay at The Cliff House or Chapter One, and the buzz was palpable from the moment we handed over our coats.
An excited mix of younger and older diners, some in gladrags, some in jeans and sweaters, clinked glasses and pored over the menu. A glass of Deus beer champagne — beer and bubbles, if you like — served alongside pork fingers and potato twists in a teacup, whetted appetites for the journey ahead.
Alas, the food and service failed to follow through. The culinary Yellow Brick Road we were promised turned out to be as potholed as the rest, ending not with Technicolor revelation in Oz, but the prosaic confusion of a spaghetti junction. It wasn’t wow. It was ‘meh’. Or at least, it would have been, had we not forked out some €200 for the pleasure.
One after another, the tasting plates arrived. Two worked well: a spoonful of beef tartar, whose cool delicacy was offset by the hot whack of scurvy grass picked that day in Greystones, and a bowl of Brussels sprouts, their sharpness ricocheting around a bowl fleshed out with squishy oyster and rich, flavoursome bone marrow vinaigrette.
Two did not. Roast white cabbage leaves served with a free range egg yolk and smoked fish sauce tasted limp and under-seasoned. A strip of lamb belly with leeks and hazelnuts arrived so rare the fat had hardly cooked; it oozed a nauseating, milky-white juice. I just don’t understand what was being attempted here.
The best courses came late — a pungent plate of Milleen’s cheese offset by a salty cracker of seeded Irish stout bread and a Douglas fern sorbet, whose crisp crystals gave off a tantalising taste of the forest — the first and only time we got a whiff of great food’s evocative potential.
By their nature, pop-ups are fun, interactive, off-the-cuff. But Yannick + Louise’s ambition, combined with the price of their hit-and-miss menu, for me served to highlight what they lack: namely appropriate kitchen systems and staff who are familiar with the dishes.
Service at Cafe Urbun was game but haphazard. Portion sizes of the same dishes regularly differed. The printer ink was running out on the menus.
I think Yannick + Louise need a third partner — a host specifically tasked to communicate what they are about.
For a lower price, it would have been much easier to put up with the inconsistencies.
I love the idea of Yannick + Louise, of roving ambassadors bringing exciting ideas to new places, but at €80pp, the bar is raised considerably.
Interestingly, wine was limited to two whites: a Spanish Albarino or Godello (both 2011), and one red, a Heretat Navas (2009), at €25 a bottle.
Perhaps because the expectations were lower, the enjoyment was higher — they overachieved rather than underperformed.
Once the price pops up, quality needs to follow.
