Restaurant review: Aniar's 24 courses of theatrics should be on your bucket list
It is my first time seeing the makeover of Aniar 2.0, an intimate room of dark intrigue, softly lit through woozily cut portals into plywood walls that might be tiny shrines to place, producers, and even chef-proprietor JP McMahon. It is an almost theatrical delivery, a culinary cabaret club freighted with the promise of a special evening. We are immediately relaxed and ready to be entertained.
Beef, yolk, a croustade of pinkish Dexter beef tartare, capped with a frosty-looking ‘branch’ of pickled reindeer moss, is single mouthful, shards of delicate croustade, a textural counterpoint to sweet, iron-rich beef, with a deep umami undertow from smoked egg yolk jam. Pickled mustard seeds and three-cornered leek pop with acidity.
Chicken, nori, is a savoury macaron sandwiching sublimely balanced and herbaceous chicken liver parfait. Crispy chicken skin adds crunch to macaron’s powdery implosion, nori dust completing another fine ‘snack’.
Bread, butter is a masterclass in simplicity: cloud-soft brioche, brushed with rendered Dexter beef fat before a pre-serving blast in the oven, is some of the best restaurant bread I have eaten; dreamily pure in-house cultured butter seasoned with wild leek vinegar finds its wild side when paired with this bread of heaven.
Squid, kohlrabi is a squat bowl fashioned from hollowed-out kohlrabi, containing tender grilled squid with kohlrabi juice, pickled kohlrabi, sea herbs and Douglas fir oil. Ascetic, minimalist, it is a hat tip to the Nordic Manifesto restaurants that inspired Aniar. That spartan purity contrasts brilliantly with superb tempura tentacles, dirtily addictive flavours and textures.
Shrimp, rhubarb hits similar Nordic notes: lightly cured native shrimp, wafer-thin slices of rhubarb, in a bowl of zesty citric rhubarb juice, completed with salted rhubarb and fleshy succulent oyster leaves. Again, excellent.
Potato, spelt is soft, pillowy grilled potato bread, savoury with kombu, served with a fulsome potato foam, buttermilk adding a nip of gentle acidity. A crisp tuile and shavings of smoked pumpkin complete another good dish.
Beetroot, dilisk is busy: beetroot tartare, chewy semi-dehydrated beetroot, raw beetroot with pickled pine zing, pickled pine flowers and cones, beetroot gel; too busy to achieve clarity of purpose on the palate.
Scallop, sea radish, on the other hand, is almost singular in its impact.
Exquisite Dublin Bay scallop roasted in brown butter to a glistening golden brown, finished over the barbecue for smoky allure, served in fine butter sauce; fermented celeriac juice, salty trout roe, fresh sea radish and sea spinach jostle impishly in the aisles but know their place.
Oyster, sea lettuce is an oyster ice cream, a longstanding signature dish. I’m always open to the far reaches of culinary experimentation, especially ice creams, recalling a recent and superb asparagus ice cream in Mara, in Waterford. Here, the principle components, ice cream and oysters, fail to marry, the wrong temperature for an almost greasy, marine umami; it suggests what might result if you blended tinned sardines with hand cream.
The main course, though very tasty, seems almost ordinary after a procession of outré experimentation. Lamb belly, wild garlic, sees braised meat parcelled in wild garlic leaves as little bon-bons; aged Achill Island lamb with a lovely cap of fat is barbecued on the bone, served with pureed wild garlic, spinach, celeriac and a rich jus speckled with wild ransom capers and mustard greens.
Carrot, sea buckthorn, a pre-dessert sorbet, with candied pumpkin seeds and chewy sweet nuggets of semi-dehydrated carrots, a clamouring clash that fails to win us over.
Yoghurt, pear is probably my dish of the night, immaculately realised, shorn down to its essential elements. It is also a real looker: Plump, proud, pale green mousse of Velvet Cloud sheep’s yoghurt carries airy wisps of wild chervil and soft lactic acidity, demure enough to counter the sweet, creamy excess of woodruff ice cream. A frosted pane of pear crisp is a perfect ‘hat’.
More sweet treats follow, including petit fours that substitute certain traditional ingredients with alternatives such as beetroot juice and dilisk yet, curiously, still present as mainstream.
All in all, counting each individual snack and petit four, there are 24 ‘courses’, too many to cover all on this page, though volume is perfectly judged and includes several top-notch dishes.
Service is both impeccable and charming but, eventually, the endless procession of dishes and obligatory pauses for explanatory breakdowns starts to chip away at the pleasure of actually eating. I also wonder if the resolute determination to cleave to Aniar’s locavore evangelism sometimes results in dishes fitting the philosophy yet faltering on the plate, ticking ingredient boxes while not equally tickling the palate. Nonetheless, Aniar is unquestionably a uniquely special Irish restaurant, a place you should dine in at least once in your life.
- Tasting menu, €175 per person, excluding wine and tip
- aniarrestaurant.ie
