Restaurant review: This golden hashed-potato is one of the best potato dishes in the nation
Etto is a small, rectangular room, with plain walls, simple tables, and a bar area. Picture: Moya Nolan
I don't bother with new year’s resolutions: I’m just too vain. I am trying to eat less, of course, but that is a monthly resolution, because it has been a long time since I’ve been able to close the button on any of my Italian-made jackets.
I had no chance of eating lightly in Etto, Dublin’s long-established Mediterranean restaurant (and sister to Uno Mas). I last reviewed Etto in 2015 and have visited often since, but not in the last two years.
Etto is a small, rectangular room, with plain walls, simple tables, and a bar area, which was all that was available when I booked. It is always full, so even bar seating felt like a win — we were on time for our 5.30pm booking, and within an hour the restaurant was full to capacity.
The meal began brilliantly with two glasses of Hidalgo Fino sherry (€6.50 per 100ml) and some comped, salted smoked almonds. Salty, tangy Fino is an excellent palate awakener, but when it is as good as Hidalgo’s version and paired with the best almonds you will ever taste, it is difficult to think of a better beginning.
Etto’s menu is divided in to ‘nibbles’, ‘fried’, ‘starters’, and ‘mains’, and a note on the menu requires guests to order a minimum of three dishes each, including a main course. A must order from the ‘fried’ section was the crispy potato (€14), which reminded me a little of Mamó Howth’s famous ‘cod chip’. Confit potato had been shaped in to three large chips, crisped in the fryer and then topped with onion jam, pecorino custard, and thinly sliced wild-boar salami. One of the most indulgent starters I’ve ever eaten, the crispy potato was offset by the sweet, meaty salami, and enriched by a dollop of cheesy-creamy pecorino custard.
Hake and chorizo croquettes (€12) are an Etto classic, but seemed even more pungent than usual, a properly garlicky aïoli adding punch. Following these fried wonders, we shared a tuna crudo (€18), which cleaned our palates nicely for the mains.
Lightly cured tuna in a kalamansi Japanese dressing was tender and lush, balanced by blobs of umami oyster mayonnaise, crisp cucumber, and piquant, zesty, pickled kumquats, which added an orange citrus tang.
For a choice of four mains, we opted for cod and deer over pumpkin risotto and a shared Delmonico steak. Roast fallow deer (€38) was an obvious choice, given that the season and the chunk of fillet were served pink and doused in a jus, which had almost Chef steak sauce richness, cut with elderberries, the latter adding a dark-fruited earthiness. Spiced deer sausage, a cep purée, and apple and lovage gel were fun flavours to mix with the deer and we both mopped up the sauce with some (gratis) sourdough bread.
Cod could be called the Donald Trump of fish: It gets a huge amount of flack for being so ubiquitous and for lacking character. However, Etto’s roast cod (€36) was revelatory, immaculately cooked, with each flake firm, but translucent, and with a seaweed potato crumb on top and a mussel beurre blanc, ensuring that each bite was perfectly seasoned. Bittersweet hispi cabbage added pleasing, contrasting flavours, as did some nutty, crunchy, diced celeriac and a caramelised cauliflower gel. This is likely the best cod main course I’ve ever eaten; if there was a better one, I’ve forgotten it.
As a side dish, we had to (once again) order Etto’s crunchy, golden hashed-potato, topped with sweet, slow-cooked ‘Lyonnaise’ onions (€7). It is one of the best potato dishes in the nation.
Etto has always had an impressive and creative wine list and, if anything, it seems to have got larger over the years. Everything you could want is there in bottle format, from Burgundy to Madeira to Piedmont, although I would like to see a larger ‘by the glass’ offering or a return of the blackboard, with daily specials by the glass. Following our fino aperitif, we moved on to floral, lively Pieropan Soave (€11) and then to berry fruited Bodegas Ponce ‘Bobal’ (€17) for our mains.
Desserts are just €8.50, so we had to indulge. My warm, dark-chocolate mousse was ethereally light, with bergamot accents and nicely matched with coconut ice cream. Malt panna cotta, with blood-orange slices, was satiny and moreish, while a roast barley ice cream added welcome nuttiness.
Etto has been around a while now, with some famed chefs in the kitchen, but I’m not sure it has ever been better.
Food: 9.5/10
Drinks: 9/10
Service: 9/10
Atmosphere: 9/10
Value: 8.5/10
Dinner for two with nibbles, starters, mains, sides and desserts, plus six glasses of wine, cost €193.62.
Etto, 18 Merrion Row, Dublin, D02 A316
Tel: 01-6788872
- Monday - Wednesday: 5-9.30pm
- Thursday: 12.30-9.30pm
- Friday-Saturday: 12-9.30pm
