Restaurant review: This Dublin osteria does nearly everything brilliantly
The interior of Dublin's Borgo eatery.
So the Crescenzi-McCarthy partnership is on a roll, it seems.
I loved Hera in Drumcondra earlier this year and last year praised their take on Thai food in Achara, and now they are back to their roots with an Osteria Locale neighbourhood restaurant in Phibsborough, a suburb on the up and becoming a sort of outcrop of Stoneybatter.
Borgo was once Loretta’s (which I liked) and remains a spacious and attractive space.
Thanks to the room’s former incarnation as a bank there are high ceilings and parquet floors but the room also has a modern feel with exposed beams, and copper-hued filament bulbs providing a warm glow.
Thought has also gone into the menu, yes most dishes are familiar but these are creative takes on the classics with fine quality ingredients.
From the three spritz on offer (all enticing) the Engineer ordered a Negroni Sporco (€11) made with Carpano Antica Formula vermouth, Campari and Lambrusco.
Sporco means ‘broken’ and this unconventional take on the Negroni was bittersweet, layered and delicious, a virtually perfect aperitif.
As is de rigueur, we began with snacks (spuntini), skipping the cold cuts and olives and going straight for Padrón peppers (€6) on a ‘Taleggio custard’, a mornay style sauce that worked surprisingly well with the properly spiky peppers.
We mopped up the remaining sauce with fluffy aerated fermented sourdough focaccia (€5). The focaccia’s fruity, lightly pungent whey butter was good, but the Taleggio custard was even better.
The antipasti included arancini and calamari at fair prices, but we were in the mood for the ‘Gambas alla Borgo’ (€18).
Toasted focaccia on the side proved useful for mopping up all the flavours and I sucked all I could manage out of those prawn heads. There must be over a hundred ‘gambas’ on offer in restaurants all over Ireland, Borgo’s is the best I’ve had.
We skipped the pizzette section (sourdough flatbreads) and had pangs of regret when we saw the ones our neighbouring table had ordered, so squeeze in one if you can; toppings include nduja, tuna crudo, and guanciale.
We also skipped mains which included hake, pork chop, and bavette steak; the pasta offerings just sounded too good.
I had heard good things about the agnolotti and gnocchetti but had to try the tortiglioni (€21) with milk braised pork ragu.
As you may know, bolognese sauce in Bologna often includes milk, pork, and veal and it is delicious but you rarely see such flavours on an Irish restaurant menu.
Borgo’s pasta is made in-house with a bronze die machine for extra texture and it showed in the tortiglioni (a smaller rougher rigatoni) which was correctly cooked and had slightly jagged edges perfect for catching the rich, tender pork pieces in their creamy sauce.
Crispy crumbs added extra texture and herb oil and Cloonbook cheese from Mayo added heft and tang to the dish.
Having visited Pescara earlier this year, the Engineer had to try the classic Abruzzese ‘spaghetti alla chitarra’ with bisque, sweet red prawns, mussels, and samphire (€23); this too was nicely composed with the flavours in harmony and with an Amalfi lemon quarter on the side for adding acidity.
For once, I decided not to order Ballymakenny potatoes and went with Abercorn Farm rainbow chard (€6) which are an inspired side dish.
The chard was crispy and nutty and its natural bitterness was offset by a peach dressing, a fine foil to the pasta courses.
Borgo’s wine list offers around 50 wines with an emphasis on Italy and prices starting at €33 and lots of options under €50.
From the eight ‘by the glass’ options we chose a dark fruited Tre Venti Nero d’Avola costing just €7.50 and an elegant and lively Antonelli Montefalco Sangiovese from Umbria at €11, both are recommended.
For dessert, I was disappointed with the tiramisu (€9), which lacked punch and intensity, and much preferred the flavourful polenta cake with brown butter fried peach slices and white chocolate mascarpone (€9), the sweet peaches working well with the rich sponge.
Borgo is doing so many things brilliantly that I feel guilty for docking a half mark for a sub-par tiramisu, but them’s the breaks.
On the Thursday we visited the room was particularly lively and I was impressed by the talented and efficient front of house team, the fairly priced, properly thought-out dishes and even the quality music on the Tannoy (klezmer, jazz, blues, alternative pop, etc).
- Borgo
- The Old Bank, 162-165 Phibsborough Road, Dublin 7
- Dinner for two with wine and a cocktail cost €134
- borgodublin.ie
