Restaurant review: A true taste of China at new Dublin eatery Nan Chinese

Nan is a welcome addition to Dublin

• Nan Chinese
• Stephen Street Lower, Dublin 2, D02NW62
• Tel: [phone]
• www.nanchinese.ie

The Chinese Year of the Rabbit celebrations finished up this week, and in case you didn’t know, 2023 is predicted to be a year of hope as the rabbit is a symbol of longevity, peace, and prosperity. The world could do with some of that.

Nan Chinese opened just a few weeks ago and is a sister restaurant to Hakkahan in Stoneybatter which I praised last summer. Hakkahan has a Sichuan menu, but Nan focuses on Huaiyang cuisine from Jiangsu Province in Eastern China

The Huaiyang region is north of Shanghai and south of Beijing and I believe Nan is the only restaurant in the country serving Huaiyang cuisine. Huaiyang cooking is highly rated and with Cantonese, Sichuan and Shandong cuisines in the Chinese culinary hierarchy.

Huaiyang has lots of dumplings and soups and generally softer textures and so it proved with many of our courses. I tried to stick with the unfamiliar, but if you are feeling unadventurous there are a smattering of familiar Cantonese and Sichuan dishes on the menu.

Nan Chinese

We began with a shared bowl of Double Boiled ‘Lion’s Head’ Soup (€12), lightly cloudy with a delicate sweet pork flavour and a touch of earthiness from some dried mushroom. The star of the soup was a billiard-ball-sized pork meatball which was tender and almost luscious in texture, and we found the best thing to do was to alternate soup with morsels of the meatball.

Next came six Prawn and Bamboo Shoot Dumplings (€11), piping hot with a sweet prawn filling, managing to be fluffy and light on top but sticky and crunchy on the base (hence pot-stickers). These were perfectly cooked and a joy to eat as were Shengjian Bao (pork buns) (€12). These were more like a large dumpling than a traditional bao bun and we adored the sticky base, the sweet soft filling and the light doughy top.

A little bit of a challenge to our Western palates with the next dish: Nanjing (Xinjiang) Salted Duck (€13), a speciality of Nanjing in the heart of the Jiangsu province. This was simply a whole poached duck cut into slices and served cold. The meat was pleasingly delicate with a sweet-salt flavour and no fat except for the the skin.

Nanjing Salted poached duck

Our charming and enthusiastic waiter had encouraged us to order the Poached Lamb Ribs with Garlic and Chili Dip (€26) as it was her favourite dish. Lamb ribs had simply been poached in a simple broth so on their own they were a little fatty but the lightly pungent garlic and chilli dipping sauces made the dish work much better.

Braised Pork Belly with Chinese Brown Sauce (€20) was more successful, the sweet meaty pork belly working brilliantly with the rich Chinese brown sauce which tasted somewhere between oyster sauce and plum sauce. The wobbly soft sweet fat on the pork belly was delicious at first, but we did need some carbohydrate to cut through the fat so our Yang Zhou Fried Rice (€15) with pork and prawn came in useful. The rice was a little under seasoned for my taste but there were enough other flavours around to compensate.

The wine list is better than you would find in most Chinese restaurants and even has some high-end bottles. My fragrant glass of Dos Amigos (€8.50) Portuguese white worked well (a blend of antao vaz and viognier), while my guest drank citrus-tinged White Hag Little Fawn IPA.

Pork belly

Rather than ordering chocolate cheesecake we risked some sweet Snow Fungus Soup which our waiter told us is popular in Chinese medicine — it promotes brain function and is good for the skin. I’m afraid this defeated us — lightly gelatinous mushroom in a sugary broth will probably best work if your gran fed it to you regularly.

Nan is a welcome addition to Dublin and I noticed that half of our fellow diners were speaking Chinese. The more traditional dishes such as the salted duck are perhaps best ordered to share between four rather than two, but definitely go for the soups and the dumplings.

The Tab:

Dinner for Two with way more food than we needed plus a mineral water, two beers and a glass of white wine cost €143.50

How to: 12 Noon to 10pm Monday - Sunday

The Verdict:

Food: 7.5/10

Wine: 7/10

Service: 8/10

Ambience: 8/10

Value: 7.5/10

In a Sentence: A well-executed regional Chinese restaurant, go for the dumplings and soups.