Restaurant review: Relax and let Dax do the work on your home-dining experience
Dax starters - brightened Leslie Williams
What makes a happy life? For me, I believe the key is to seek out pleasures in everyday things. I figured this out early on and I firmly believe it was what led me to obsess over food — what could be more quotidian than eating?
Most of our neighbours on Continental Europe have long understood the pleasures of the table while for some in Ireland the memory of the Great Hunger still lingers — it seems trivial to focus too much on the quality of food, we should just be happy that there is food. If I ever felt this I’m afraid my hedonism blotted it out.
I first visited France in the mid 1990s and was completely smitten. We visited my wife's friends in Brittany and they talked of food all day long. “Who is getting the bread?” was asked at least five times each day; at breakfast we talked about lunch and at lunch we talked about what was for dinner.
That first visit was in Spring and that summer we spent three weeks in South-West France in the Landes and Gascony — home to Madiran, Jurançon, Armagnac Confit de Canard, and foie gras. There was also pastis — a filo pastry apple tart where the dough traditionally contains duck fat and is stretched to the size of an enormous table while the apples are pre-soaked in armagnac and syrup — it’s laborious but a worthy endeavour as the result is heavenly.
Our 2020 summer holiday was due to retrace some of those steps but at least there was Dax At Home. Dax Restaurant was opened by Olivier Meisonnave in the 2000s and named for his home town in the Landes. Dax was good from its first day — one of those perfect basement restaurants for lingering after a boozy lunch (and maybe staying on for dinner service), but it is stratospherically good since Graham Neville became head chef.
Dax is opening again for Christmas and has a couple of nooks and crannies you can socially distance in if you get to visit. But if lockdown arrives again, their take-out food is some of the very best I found all year, and certainly the best presented — pretty enough to eat from the containers but also simple to transfer onto plates.
I ordered online from the set menu and collected at a designated time. The starters were cold and the mains were hot so I placed them in a low oven at 80°C. while we ate our starters.
Clare Smoked Salmon, Pickled Mackerel and Heirloom Ballymakenny Potato were served with a piquant but almost luscious sauce that lifted the flavours of the pristinely fresh fish and cut nicely through the oils while the potatoes added extra textures.
Creamy fresh Goat Curd cheese was paired with Roast Vegetables and Pickles and had a fruity-sour elderberry sauce, some seeds for extra texture and contrast and some purple sorrel flowers to add a lemony oxalic acid kick. Both these ‘Nordic’ style starters managed to be comforting, tasty and thought-provoking and the excellent bread was used to wipe our plates clean.
Prawn Raviolo were hockey-puck-sized and packed with sweet shellfish inside a silky but firm pasta while the onion-rich Lyonnaise style creamy sauce was elegant but also substantial. Tender pink venison had sweet braised red cabbage on the side and slightly spiky meaty peppercorn sauce to lift things a little further. Potatoes had likely lost a tiny touch of their crispiness in the journey home but they made it up in flavour given they were nutty Ballymakenny Violetta, sweet pink-fleshed Red Emmalie and a fruity rich white-fleshed variety — possibly Yukon Gold.
Desserts are always a highlight in Dax and so it proved with Dax At Home. Poached Pear with a cacao rich Chocolate Mousse on a Financier almond cake base was familiar but also arguably as good a chocolate mousse as I’ve tasted. Intensely fragrant Vanilla Cream pot topped with fruity ripe pineapple and caramelised nuts shaded it slightly in the dessert complexity stakes but both were delicious.
So if you are unsure about the best way to live can I recommend a visit to Dax — either one: the Landes has amazing food but the Dax on Pembroke Street in Dublin is probably better.
- Dax at Home costs €44 per person for a starter, main and dessert plus bread and petit-fours. Dax is open for indoor dining until Christmas Eve and for dinner on December 28, 29, 30, 31
