Leslie Williams has been the Irish Examiner's wine columnist since 2012 and has been reviewing restaurants since 2015.
Our rating: 9/10
My quest to find great value places to eat out continues this week, and this one should be top of your list.
In May this year we released the Irish Examiner’s 100 Best Places to Eat and Variety Jones came in at number 5. What placed it so high was not just the superlative cooking but the generous portions and brilliant atmosphere. Well, Mongoose is their more relaxed brother restaurant right next door and it has the exact same ethos but at a bargain price.
Mongoose’s location is where Variety Jones used to be when they opened first, having since moved next door to a slightly larger space.
The room is long and narrow with an open fire kitchen at the back, bare brick walls and simple wooden tables. The atmosphere is friendly and relaxed, the menu is à la carte and changes regularly, and the music a little louder than you might expect. Make sure you understand this is casual dining.
Head chef is Shane Stanley and, for now, Mongoose is open Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, the days most fine dining restaurants are closed. I love this idea: hospitality workers need restaurants like this and I also prefer eating out early in the week. The menu is determinedly seasonal, just like at Variety Jones, and quality touches are everywhere, even in the cutlery and napkins, not to mention the music on the tannoy (e.g. Massive Attack’s ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ and Led Zeppelin’s ‘Ramble On’).
My guest was chef and writer Blanca Valencia of Gazpacho Chronicles Substack fame (well worth a follow), always a solid companion as our culinary tastes almost always align. We began with a meaty slab of ox tongue with green beans and a rich herbal vinaigrette (€10.50). The lightly pungent intensity of the offal worked well with its sauce and it was great to see this underrated cut on a city centre menu.
Mongoose restaurant, 78 Thomas St., Dublin. Picture: Moya Nolan.
What worked less well was our cockles with white wine, chilli and garlic (€12.50), purely because the kitchen neglected to season the dish, leaving the molluscs bland and lifeless. Once salt was added the flavours opened up nicely, it must have been an oversight.
Sausage and fennel ragout with fettuccine (€18.50) had a generous quantity of sausage meat with vibrant anise-fennel flavours mixed through al dente fresh pasta. This was a nigh on faultless dish, the flavours rounded, layered and complex, the addition of oregano and chives lending depth to the sauce. A bowl of this and some bread would be the perfect meal.
A whole plaice (€26) arrived next, topped with a tangy, punchy, herbal sauce vierge with lots and lots of capers and chopped peeled tomato.
The fish was enormous, the size of many a black sole costing three times the price, flaking perfectly and deliciously tender with that classic creamy-rich plaice flavour fully intact; it was also a taste of my childhood as my mam cooked plaice virtually every Friday.
A bowl of new potatoes (€6) lightly dressed with butter and herbs was the perfect accompaniment.
At this point, I should confess that we had also ordered the porchetta (€20) as a second main course, but we took just tiny slivers to taste it, so I have left it off the bill total above.
Perhaps the best value item on the menu, the porchetta was the size of a frisbee, an inch thick and had a rich meaty gravy. It came home in a box and made an excellent lunch with crusty bread the next day.
Mongoose’s drinks list is a short selection of natural and sustainable Mediterranean reds and whites with bottles starting at €40 and glasses at €13. Spritz, fizz and beer (Whiplash) are also on offer and prices are fair. Blanca’s glass of Kir Yianni Asyrtiko from Macedonia in northern Greece (€13) was lively and crisp and perfect for the plaice, while my Sicilian orange Cantina Rallo Catarratto (€13) was textured and a little funky and perfect with the tongue, cockles, and especially the fennel sausage pasta. I also loved that the wine was served in good quality stemware.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that there is always room for dessert, not to mention that as a reviewer it is my sacred duty, waistline bedamned.
Sticky toffee pudding with Jersey milk ice cream (€10) has already gone a little viral and I could see why as this was ridiculously rich and sticky, I suspect they will never be let take it off the menu. Chocolate cremeux (€10) was properly chocolatey and nicely cut by the cherry sorbet on top. Better still, on the side was a large crumbly bitter sweet amaretto biscuit.
So, Mongoose is a gem, not a replica of Variety Jones but a re-imagining of the VJ concept with a casual dining focus. I can’t wait to return.
