Ronan Ryan has been behind some of your favourite Dublin restaurants. He was manager at The Mermaid until 2004 when he moved on to open Town Bar & Grill with chef Temple Garner. They expanded their New York-influenced Italian fare to a space under a railway bridge near Grand Canal Dock and named it Bridge Bar & Grill. The venture was a casualty of those sticky years of 2008 and 2009, ultimately leading to Bridge Bar & Grill being taken on by new owners and operating under the same name until September 2013. It was then that the opportunity arose for Ryan’s team to move back in and they reopened as Pizza e Porchetta in January 2014. Coming through intact throughout those years of change is a love for Italian food with a New York accent.
The railway tunnel that houses Pizza e Porchetta has been brightened up by Ryan’s team with white walls, wooden surfaces and butcher’s tiles so that it’s cozy rather than cavernous. The wood-fired pizza oven greets you as you walk in the door. “I visited a pizzeria in Washington in October called 2 Amy’s and they did a whole roast pig on a Saturday,” Ryan tells me. “I thought it worked really well with the wood-fired oven in the middle of the bar.” Being welcomed by chefs shovelling dough into the piping hot open pizza oven does wonders to whet the appetite.
To start, we share a plate of Drogheda-based specialist grower Brendan Guinan’s salt baked beets. They’re accompanied by chunks of mozzarella, segments of sweet blood orange and the salted, pressed and dried roe which is known by the name of bottarga (€13). It’s simple, unfussy and it lets the ingredients do their own bidding. There are plenty of inspiring starters to start off your evening here, many designed for sharing. The cocktail list piques the interest with unexpected mixtures like the Malting Tower Martini (€9.50) – a pear vodka, ginger beer and cinnamon concoction – inviting you to get squiffy with them. The wine list offers old favourites alongside a few unfamiliar bottles – unfamiliar to us wine novices, that is. The menu as a whole is short but carefully crafted.
There are plates of handmade pasta dishes to choose from but we’re here for the namesakes. “Porchetta actually comes from my homeland,” our Croatian waiter whispers conspiratorially. “The Italians are just like the British – always claiming the good stuff.”
Porchetta is a rolled loin of pork meat that is slow-cooked and stuffed with deliciousness. At Pizza e Porchetta, they bone the pork and rub it with fennel pollen and rock salt. It’s then roasted in the oven before being finished in the pizza oven. The meat is supplied by TJ Crowe’s farm in Tipperary whose rare breed pork is some of the finest you will eat in this country. This excellence of produce goes some way to explain the €20 price tag on the beautifully executed dish which arrives with kale, pickled apple and pear and a grain salad. A glass of 2011 Mario Borghi Nero d’Avola (€6.75) makes this a meal to remember.
The White and Green pizza (€15) is a wonder. It’s that great combination of fluffy and crispy that can only be achieved in wood-fired ovens. To the toppings of mozzarella, rocket, Parmesan and lemon, I add speck and €2 to my pizza bill. €17 feels a little excessive for a pizza but it’s one of the best pizzas I’ve had in Dublin so I think it’s worth it.
The pumpkin cake dessert is a deconstructed experiment that doesn’t quite work for the kitchen. “It’s that dessert’s first day,” our other waiter tells me. Perhaps it came into its own after a few more trials.
We finish off our meal with well-brewed macchiatos at €2.20 each. Our bill, which also includes a bottle of sparkling water and a tonic water, comes to €69.15.
I like the simplicity of Pizza e Porchetta, and I really like the staff. Even though the menu is small in size, it caters for quite a large range of tastes making it quite the versatile dinner spot. It’s buzzing by the time we leave and I notice the different meals taking place in the same tunnel – it looks like there’s a Mum and her grown son; there’s a table of workmates; there’s a canoodling couple; there’s a couple who look like they’re having a row (not the food’s fault); there’s a table of young women who look like they’re old friends reuniting. My point is that Pizza e Porchetta works for plenty of dinner scenarios because of its accessible food that’s made and served really well. It’s great to see life breathed back into an old railway tunnel.
Pizza e Porchetta
Clanwilliam Terrace
Grand Canal Quay
Dublin 2
01-6624199
http://www.pizzaeporchetta.com/
Words: Aoife McElwain
