In his new Ranelagh restaurant, Brioche, chef-owner Gavin McDonagh is trying hard.
Vitally, he is not trying too hard.
Which is good for his food, and good for his restaurant.
Mr McDonagh and his team are cooking some very good food and if Brioche, in its infancy, can be said to have a USP, then it lies in the fact that the dishes offer wonderful textures.
Slow-braised daube of beef with potato purée and glazed vegetables, for example, is simple fare raised to a serendipitous state, thanks to the plosive texture of the beef, thanks to the pillowy texture of the potato, and thanks to the almost-al-dente root vegetables, the daring bit of this trifecta. Put them together and it's a mouth party.
A special dish of the day, slow-roasted pork cheek, may have been even better, the flavour savoury-sweet and the texture again as unctuous as one can imagine.
It's clear that the team at Brioche think about this texture element a lot. You are served two breads – baguette and brioche – all the better to contrast their textures. In their dish of rhubarb “crumble” (yes, more punctuation with the puddings... ), the “crumble” has been completely shattered, and trails snake-like across the plate, under and in between the shards of rhubarb and the very fine vanilla ice cream. It's a simple device, but an effective one, for the “crumble” texture is much more pronounced when served this way, creating another terrific trio.
And the beetroot and Delice de Bourgogne salad offers beetroot textures in the form of see-through mandolined circles of golden beets that play off splendidly with the light mousse, whose richness is cut by a fine blood orange and hazelnut dressing.
The small plate format the restaurant has adopted works very well if you are eating with a friend and sharing everything – you would have needed to have run your 5k in order to put away the ample foie gras dish on your own, even if it didn't come with duck-fat fried brioche. A clever dish of potato three-ways – fries; pave of celeriac and sweet potato and basil and goat's cheese potato roulade – is pretty much destined to be the vegetarian dish of the year for many people, so don't expect the person who shares that to offer tastes.
Three of us accounted for 6 small plates plus two puddings and a cheeseboard, where the quartet of cheeses (Durrus, Wicklow Blue; Delice de Bourgogne and Tomme) were all in excellent fettle and served with Sheridan's biscuits. The small plates cost in and around a tenner, the puddings around seven euro. Given the work involved in each dish, that is excellent value for money.
Brioche's secret – not trying too hard, not going all out for the cheffy wow!, focusing on creating elegant textures as well as apposite flavours – means that Mr McDonagh's plates are delightfully enjoyable, and easy and fun to eat. This is very mature cooking for a very young restaurant, and the composition of the dishes shows both considerable contemplation, and considerable restraint.
Service is assured and the room (the old kitchen of the McCambridge's bakery) is lean and lovely, with opposing banquettes, and with an open kitchen at the far end from the Elmwood Avenue entrance. Dublin gets another excellent restaurant in its seemingly unstoppable march to the culinary first division.
