I am regularly asked (if you space out two such inquiries over seven years it still qualifies as regular) whether certain restaurants are more difficult to write about than others. My answer doesn’t hinge on concept, price-point or ethnicity. For me the places that are most choresome are those that are simply okay, perfectly fine, not bad at all, nothing to write home (or 1,200 words) about. Between the take-downs and the love-letters (see the last issue) there’s a whole lot of middling going on. The same is true of most of our life experiences perhaps. We just tend not to memorialise the forgettables in prose.
These are places that feed you reasonably well, you don’t resent the spend, you just know that an incrementally better version of lunch or dinner was hypothetically available to you. You wouldn’t seek them out again but if fate saw fit to seat you at one of their tables it wouldn’t occasion a fit of pique. Maybe other reviewers simply shelve these and go out again in search of a place worthy of their readers’ time and interest. Not me. When I go out with the intention of reviewing a place it’s getting reviewed, regardless of how unremarkable it is. This is less an act of disrespect to my audience than a challenge to myself. Besides, I’m not in Dublin right now and I don’t have a spare in my back pocket.
A couple of weeks back my old school friend LeBlanc was visiting from Brussels and suggested that we get some lunch in CN Dumpling. Very much a sliced-white guy in his youth, he’s now something of a self-made lekkerbek (pardon my Flemish) in middle age. Our trio was rounded out by another old pal – a chef who quit his kitchen for the classroom a while back. Someone needs to teach kids the difference between a chiffonade and a brunoise. Montague Street now has a couple of places to eat and drink and has duly been declared a scene. Sure thing. I like La Gordita very much. Two-Faced is a newish spot that pitches itself as a Gen Z youth club with sour wine and loud music. I’ll probably swerve that one.
CN Dumpling then represents a middle ground for the micro-precinct. You won’t get the sticker shock of the former (it’s worth it) or the age-discrepancy shock of the latter. This place is from the Zakura stable and I suppose a step-sibling of sorts to the late lamented CN Duck which used to sling top-drawer Cantonese barbecue in Ranelagh.
The idea is xiaochi/Chinese tapas/ small bites, whichever of those descriptors works for you. The room is nondescript with obligatory outbreaks of neon. There are cocktails of a sort for the scenesters. We stick to beers and order freely. First out of the traps some competently made Duck Dumplings. The minced filling is well seasoned, the wrappers a little too thick for me. More exciting is a Chicken ‘Snowflake’. What sounds like a Farage put-down manifests as a kind of dumpling pancake, with five plump specimens suspended in a disc of batter. We also get some Pork and Prawn Siu Mai, which are fine. In a city now lousy with dumplings these ones don’t particularly stand out. This wouldn’t have been the case even five short years ago. Biang Biang and Sister 7 occupy the top slots in the rankings for me right now.
Elsewhere on the menu we sample some Typhoon Prawns (butterflied and pleasantly crunchy) and some Crispy (sic) Chilli Squid featuring textures alternating between tender and prophylactic. We find ourselves returning to pick from a bowl of Beef Rendang that has migrated onto the menu from Indonesia or maybe Singapore. It’s well spiced and pleasingly fatty. MaPo Tofu was pretty good too but I prefer my curd quivering in this dish rather than shrivelled. Service is friendly if a bit too leisurely.
If you were wondering about the ‘CN’ in the name (life is short) it does indeed appear to simply correspond to ‘China’. When a state becomes a global hegemon the right of abbreviation is reserved. Might means never having to say your full name.
Which brings me to Hong Kong, whose people have been getting a taste of China for some time now. I suppose brutal totalitarianism is the very definition of an acquired taste. It certainly must be hard to swallow. Taste of Hong Kong is a sort of fast-casual restaurant that’s been operating on Moore St for some months now. Perennially bet-down but always unbowed it’s a thoroughfare with realness to spare and a diverse footfall that encourages the proliferation of ‘ethnic’ restaurants. As the name suggests they specialise in Hong Kong barbecue or Siu Mei – a collective Cantonese term for roasted meats ranging in production method from rotisseries to ‘bullet ovens’ to wood-firing.
You’ll generally find pork belly (Siu yuk and Char Siu), Duck (Siu aap) and chicken. In its places of origin the barbecue would often be taken home to be eaten with plain rice and greens. At its best Siu Mei can hold its own against the world’s greatest barbecue traditions. CN Duck (that I mentioned earlier) often rose to those heights and cultivated a slavish following. This place might struggle to do that. It’s a bright, modern space with about twenty covers and some impressive ducting. There’s a ‘living wall’ of fake foliage that will out-live us all. Order from the counter and take a seat.
You could start with an order of Home Made Dumplings but the description might be misleading, unless some of the cooks are living out the back, which is actually possible. I once interrupted what looked like a serious poker game while looking for the john in a place on Parnell St. I walked through an unmarked door into a room dense with smoke. Every mouth had a cigarette dangling, dealer had a green visor on. The full go. Not the kind of flush I was looking for. Those dumplings (whether they’re made in-house or not) are pretty good, certainly better than no dumplings.
The roast meats are to be had with rice or noodles in any combination that you like along with some items like Beef Noodle Soup (more Taiwanese then HK) and a couple of stir-fries. Here they cunningly pre-empt the doggy-bag request by serving your dinner in take-out containers (just as they would in HK). This is neat but also renders some of the food difficult to eat, even with my trusty Opinel ‘eating knife’.
It is traditional to eat these proteins (especially the birds) cleavered on the bone but the flesh doesn’t quite yield here as it should. For an extra couple of bucks they’ll take it off the bone for you. The duck is well flavoured (it’s from Silverhill) but the chicken is simply too bouncy. The pork belly is the clear winner, well rendered and with good crackling. The noodles swim in a cloudy broth of indeterminate savouriness that’s not unpleasant. Portions are generous and the prices are reasonable.
There we have it then. Mediocre is murder but with these places maybe it wouldn’t kill you to find out for yourself.
Words: Conor Stevens
Photographs: Killian Broderick
4b Montague St, D2
Unit 77, Moore St, D1
