Restaurant Review: Dublin's Bar Pez is a delight - with simple but assured cooking
The interior of Dublin's Bar Pez.
- Bar Pez
- Kevin Street Lower, Dublin 8, D08TY47
- Barpez.ie
- How To: No reservations; Thursday - Monday: 3-10pm; Tuesday - Wednesday: Closed
- The Tab: Several small plates, five glasses of excellent wine, and a shared dessert cost €155.50.
Are Dubliners over their fish phobia yet? I think they might be. We still don’t have quite enough fish restaurants in Dublin for a port city of over a million people, but at least now we have a choice.
I think the change in our attitude fully began in 2015-16 when Niall Sabongi opened raw bar Klaw and Peter Hogan and Jumoke Akintola opened Fish Shop on Queen Street and began roasting fish like Megrim Sole in a woodfired oven.
They have since opened Beach House in Tramore and Bar Pez is venue number 3 (they also have Fish Shop 2 on Benburb St.).
Bar Pez (BP) opened in late July and declared itself: “Very much a bar, with seafood-focused wine and fare” — a succinct, accurate description.
The room is basic but has charm with tables against the wall and a bar in front of the kitchen area where we chose to sit - we hugely enjoyed our foodie chats with the chef.
Our meal began, as perhaps all meals should, with gilda (€3.50) - the classic San Sebastian palate awakener of an olive, a folded anchovy and pickled chilli pepper on a spike (pintxo).
Bar Pez’s version got the balance perfect — salt, vinegar and umami hit the palate first and were then cut by the crisp green pyrazine flavours and heat from the chilli pepper.
Bread and butter (€3.50) was of course a crusty, nutty sourdough and this excellent bread appeared a few times during our meal, notably in the thing of beauty that was the crab sandwich.
Thin toasted sourdough encased a mound of fresh crab and coleslaw with some thin slices of apple to lift the flavours and add a hint of sweetness.
Ricotta (€8) was made in-house and its velvety creamy goodness was elevated by sweet baby tomatoes and good olive oil.
Squid (€12) was roasted for a bare two minutes (I watched the timer) until the flesh began to curl and the proteins had come together. It was delicate and sweet and sitting on a tangy herbal salsa verde with some fat capers for extra texture and salinity.
Taramasalata (€8.50) was also made in-house with BP’s fish supplier smoking the cod roe to the restaurant’s specification - pungent and creamy with radishes, endive and cucumber for contrast.
Fried fish (€14) was tender translucent haddock in a light beer batter with a herbal mayonnaise tartare sauce.
Bar Pez’s wine list is singularly impressive, there are fine dining restaurants with Michelin stars that don’t come close.
The focus is on smaller organic and natural producers and is cleverly split into themes reflecting the environment’s influence on wine.
Hence we have Ocean (Txakoli, Albariño), River (Loire, Ribera del Duero), Mountain (Jura, Styria) and Hills and Plains (Alsace, Auvergne). Burgundy gets its own section as does Grower Champagne.
There are some wise selections by the glass, all of which will suit the food, and some daily fine wine specials via Coravin.
Glasses come in 125ml or 175ml and while I waited for my guest I softened up my palate with a small glass of a glass of Martin Texier ‘La Rouvière’ (€11), a natural Rhône white with roundness and weight.
As our food began to arrive, we ordered Txakolina (€8/11), the classic Basque thirst-quencher with a hint of spritz and a light touch of saline.
It worked well with the fried fish, crab sandwich and squid. Better still with our later courses was Ube Miraflores (€12/€16) which was yeasty, chalky and fragrant with a salty, bone-dry finish.
From the sherry town of Sanlucar de Barrameda, this is unfortified, but aged under the same flor yeast as Manzanilla — if you order just one wine make it this one.
To finish there was just one choice of dessert, a plum tart (€9.50). Why not a choice of two or three tarts? Everyone loves dessert! This was lightly sweet with a pleasingly fluffy sponge and had a dollop of crème fraîche on the side for balance.
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- Bar Pez is a delight with simple but assured cooking and one of the best wine lists in the country. Visit early to avoid the crowds.
