Restaurant review: There's only one option at the joyful Variety Jones

"The €90 per person ‘chef’s choice’ menu is the only option so don’t bring your fussy friends but do bring an appetite, the bigger the better."

Sun, 20 Oct, 2024 - 11:29

Leslie Williams

Variety Jones
78 Thomas Street, Dublin 8, D08 F2RN.
varietyjones.ie
Open: Wed-Sat: 5-10pm
The bill: Two multi-course ‘Chef’s Choice; menus plus three glasses of wine cost a perfectly fair €222

‘Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take something off,’ said Coco Chanel. Sadly the art of understatement has become quite rare in this instagrammable world of ours, especially in the restaurant world.

Blink, and you’ll miss the entrance to Variety Jones (VJ). There is no sign, just a cartoon line drawing of a face on the door.

My guest, the Marathon Runner (MR) described the room as the lovechild of a rectangle and a triangle, and I can’t do better than that — long and narrow with sticky-out bits, an alcove or two and a small open kitchen at the back.

There are art pieces and bare brick walls and while you couldn’t call it roomy it doesn’t feel cramped, it feels like a secret.

But a secret it is not, with a Michelin star and weekend bookings disappearing within seconds of going live every two months.

Chef Keelin Higgs and his brother Aaron opened in December 2018 as a place to ‘break bread’ and ‘eat family style’.

I wrote about them just a few weeks after they opened and then I visited twice more in the following weeks for pure pleasure but I had not been back since.

The €90 per person ‘chef’s choice’ menu is the only option so don’t bring your fussy friends but do bring an appetite, the bigger the better.

Our meal began with Flaggy Shore oysters in a Vietnamese dressing, the exact same way it had when I visited five years ago, but this time the dressing seemed a tad too salty for the delicate oyster flesh despite the lemongrass and sweeter notes.

This ‘exaggeration’ was quickly forgotten with the next bite, a tomato tart with housemade ricotta and smoked sweet cherry tomatoes which had a pleasing barbecue intensity.

A Thai style succulent duck sausage with shisho leaves made my mouth water, and a squid cracker with cod roe mayonnaise and togarashi spice reminded us (in the best possible way) of Tayto Rancheros.

A fine beginning. Next up another throwback to 2019, the same exquisitely delicate duck liver parfait which has been on the menu since Variety Jones opened, as our waiter told us.

This time it came with smoked figs and fluffy potato waffles crisp and steaming from the waffle iron. Scooping silky pâté onto hot waffles proved hugely enjoyable, as tasty as it was visceral.

Chargrilled trout with melting flesh and the crispiest skin imaginable came with tangy nutty sourdough bread and yeast-infused grilled cauliflower. We knew we needed to leave room for more courses but of course we finished all the bread, you couldn’t not.

Spaghetti alfredo just like the chef’s dad used to make was a buttery, cheesy emulsion — rich but also profoundly peppery and with properly al-dente house made pasta — exactly perfect for me but a little too dense for MR.

By now I’d loosened my belt as there was more, much more to come. Barbecued Andarl pork chop was pink, tender, and sweet while crunchy grilled broccoli and leeks had been tossed in old school romesco sauce.

A gorgeous main course, I sucked on that pork chop bone until it was clean.

There was some mild disappointment with the other side dish of grilled mushrooms (lion’s mane and shiitake) which were too firm, and served in polenta we found too soft — but we had more than enough to be getting on with so we didn’t much mind.

VJ’s wine list is updated monthly by the brilliant Kathleen who talked us through the options knowledgeably.

Entirely sourced from small producers and independent importers there was lots of choice including house made zero alcohol options such as ginger ale and a tarragon pineapple soda.

I began with a glass of searingly dry and yeasty La Riva Manzanilla Sherry which I loved (even if it didn’t love some of the early courses like the liver parfait), and followed that with a tangy fruity Gramona Mart Rosé from Penedès while MR enjoyed her textured crisp Catavano Verdejo.

The meal finished with another flourish of creativity with a blackcurrant themed pudding — a spongecake soaked in blackcurrant syrup, whole berries, yoghurt curds, candied almonds, and a brilliant herbal-floral blackcurrant leaf ice-cream.

Service for the evening was warm, knowledgeable, and supremely proficient — an error relating to sparkling vs still water refills was spotted within 90 seconds by our waiter Annie despite the error being someone else’s.

Variety Jones is a joy, comforting, generous, and with gorgeous food that is somehow both profound and unpretentious at the same time. Just remember to wear loose pants.

THE VERDICT: