Restaurant review: The secret’s out about this Italian bolthole in Dublin 1

"Terra Madre has been making people happy on a nightly basis for over a decade now so the secret is well and truly out, and yet every visit still feels like a discovery."

Sat, 28 Sep, 2024 - 02:00

Leslie Williams

Terra Madre,
13A Bachelors Walk, Dublin 1,
Telephone: 089 244 0277
Open: Mon-Thur, 5-10pm; Fri, 12.30-3pm, 5-10pm; Sat, 12.30-3pm, 5-10pm; Sun: 5-9.30pm
The bill: Dinner for two with a shared antipasto, two pasta dishes, a shared main course, two desserts and a bottle of excellent wine cost a very fair €157.00.

Everyone needs a secret restaurant, a place you can hide in for a couple of hours and indulge in fine food and wine. A French bistro would work, but I think an Italian trattoria is better, more comforting and more welcoming.

Dublin has a few options but I think the best is Terra Madre. You’d easily miss it, with just a small sign tied to a railing on Bachelor’s Walk mere steps from O’Connell Bridge. As you descend to the romantically dim basement you will find nine tables with capacity for less than 30 people.

The room is rustic and casual, the atmosphere welcoming and warm with happy conversations all around punctuated frequently by the Italian accent of Marco the busy mâitre‘d who seemed to be everywhere at once checking on his guests.

There were couples and groups of friends and all were clearly having a brilliant time but thankfully there was a spare table. We had tried to book but failed to get through on the landline and so had just turned up at 6pm on a warm autumnal Sunday evening (the autumnal equinox as it happened).

The menu is exactly as you would hope, split into antipasto, primi, secondi, and dessert with two to four choices in each. We began with involtini di bresaola (€17.50), gorgeous rolls of delicate flavourful air-dried beef encasing shards of 16-month-aged parmesan with chopped celery to add freshness and mayonnaise to bind it together. Such a simple dish yet perfectly executed and nicely designed to whet our appetites for the pasta courses.

Gnocchi with pistachio pesto (€20.50) came in an intensely creamy sauce that had been further enriched with streaks of smoked ‘speck’ ham and tangy, almost liquid, stracciatella cheese. This intense gnocchi was countered nicely by our light northern Italian red which proved even more effective with the Engineer’s porcini filled ravioli (€20.50) in a complex umami-rich mushroom and truffle sauce.

I’m fairly sure some truffle oil had been added which overpowered the porcini flavours a little, but this was still a very well executed dish. Thankfully bread was provided gratis to allow us tomop up every scrap of sauce on each plate.

Despite the rich pasta courses we still found room for a shared Tuscan wild boar stew (€24.50) — meaty, sweet, and properly autumnal with cannellini beans adding heft and chunks of tender boar meat flaking easily under our forks.

Terra Madre’s wine list is 90% Italian but starts at €30 for a bottle of Bergerac followed by a Primitivo di Manduria for €36 (€8 and €10 per glass respectively). Just five whites are offered and 20 reds which makes sense given the richness of the dishes served.

I am not exaggerating when I say this might be the best short wine list I’ve ever seen with only impeccable producers listed and very fair prices — eg, Produttori Barbaresco 2020 for €85, more usually priced at €100 in restaurants.

If your date is rich you should pitch for the excellent Barthélemy 2018 from Château le Puy (€235) or the rare and magnificent Biondi Santi Brunello di Montalcino 2017 (€365), one of the world’s great wines.

We settled on a more modest bottle of I Clivi ‘Schioppettino’ for €56 from the Veneto made from the obscure schioppettino grape. This was bright, floral, and juicy with high acidity and a touch of pepper so was perfect for cutting through the rich pasta sauces and the wild boar — the Engineer declared it her new favourite wine.

From a choice of four desserts each costing €9.50 I had to try the tiramisu and was not disappointed. Presented in a simple jam jar it was just about perfect, rich with dark coffee flavours that balanced out the sweet creamy mascarpone, I scraped the jar clean.

The Engineer opted for a Limoncello Baba, a version of ‘rum baba’ where a fluffy light sponge cake had been soaked in a fine quality limoncello. In places the sponge had almost liquified and with each spoonful she took the room seemed to fill with the scent of sun sweetened lemons. I cadged as much as I was allowed but this was clearly not a dessert for sharing.

Terra Madre has been making people happy on a nightly basis for over a decade now so the secret is well and truly out, and yet every visit still feels like a discovery.

THE VERDICT: