So another month, another DoubleTake™. I figured I had this one lined up just so – a side-by-side look at two tarted-up taprooms that now serve food worth eating, to a crowd who’ve just discovered stout. This s**t writes itself I thought! And then just like that I decided that I didn’t feel like writing about one of them, for no reason at all. Maybe I’ll get back to it but in the meantime I’ll simply retcon the relevance of the other place in and nobody will notice.
You’ll have noticed that a lot of young folks like to gather in and around Stephen Street (and environs) at the weekends, it’s quite the scene. At one end you have the febrile line outside the place that gives pizza away to needy young people (they don’t actually give it away, it just seems like that and needy doesn’t mean what it used to) and at the other you have Caribou. In its former incarnation as P-Macs it seemed to attract some of the most enthusiastic weekenders in town and that’s just fine – youths get wasted while they’re young as the saying goes. I used to haunt these very corners with a similar bent when The Hairy Lemon was The William Tell and Bartley’s was still standing and shit was real. Whatever. The owners have classed the joint up and Caribou now seems intended to appeal to a slightly calmer (and perhaps more aspirational) cohort.
The place is part of a stable of successful spots including Kodiak in Rathmines and Bonobo in Smithfield among others. They are in the business of knowing their audience(s). On a dismal Tuesday afternoon it’s a pleasant place to be. It’s airy and lots of light would come through those picture windows if there was any. It’s quite a nicely appointed space really. The panelling around the banquettes works and those booths look like they could be difficult to (want to) get out of. If feels like a place where young adults who live with their parents can try mid-century furniture on for size. Like those websites where one can ‘virtually’ try sunglasses on you could ‘vibe’ to the feeling of being somewhat tastefully house-proud. I guess when you can’t get a mortgage of your own you might as well go somewhere fun and help the owners with theirs.
The menu is aiming for broad appeal and that’s as it should be. From the ‘Bits’ bit you’ll find the obligatory Gordal Olives, Gildas and Almonds. Skip the Popcorn Chicken which tastes of nothing more than the hot honey that I’d asked to be served on the side. You’ll find the trifecta of sauce modishness on the menu here – hot honey, ranch dressing and peppercorn sauce and that’s instructive of the kind of place it is. It’s tuned in.
There are burgers of the (Nashville-hot) Chicken and Smash varieties and a section of ‘toasties’. We are here however for one dish in particular – the Steak Frites. The internet has been gibbering over this plate of meat and potatoes since the place opened and for once it has not been gibbering in vain. A mere sixteen bucks buys you a 6oz rump steak anointed with a bright, verdant chimichurri. It is thickly sliced and sits on a bed of good fries that have been liberally doused with an earthy and just piquant peppercorn sauce. If you have a problem with gravy on chips I don’t want to know you. I dispatched it with a (very good) Bloody Mary that cost just two quid less. I’d eat this any day of the week on my own dime – do note though, that if any of those days are weekend ones, you’ll be eating a bigger (10oz) steak with a bigger (€24) tab. Fish and Chips overachieves too with a decent tranche of cod in a light batter and a great coarse tartar sauce.
The main room is pet-friendly, we are joined halfway through lunch by a wee woolly guy being toted around in his carrier, half in the bag while his human sticks to coffee. The more intimate back rooms appear to be petting-friendly too. As I pass by at one point there’s a young couple wearing the faces off one another, at half two in the day. I move on after a few moments and leave them to it. Nevertheless, Caribou is patently a place that knows its place. The ceiling’s not too high, the floor could be much lower. We could use more like this.
Just the very next day in brilliant sunlight walking past the cricket grounds in College you can almost feel the buds on every branch straining to heed Spring’s eager bidding and it’s thrilling. The seasons have little sway though where we are headed – the dystopia of the digital docklands with its straight lines and glass canyons. If you come across an occasional tree it looks like a rendering of a tree. They bloom around here in Q1, if the numbers are right. Unlike the Caribou cohort I suspect that the clientele down here don’t smoke rollies or live with the folks. They probably crush wheatgrass shots before a few sets at the company gym every morning. And more power to them. Your health is your wealth etc. Six-figures and gilt-edged health insurance even more so. They possibly live ten floors up.
On the ground floor of one such building, rubbing shoulders with the Indeeds and Fiserves and Salesforces is Allta, Niall Davidson’s much-feted modern Irish restaurant. I’m here to slum it in the bar to the left of the dining room. A couple of people doing bar things seem genuinely surprised (rather than pleased) to see us. ‘A reservation for Ste…’ is wafted away with a gesture to the empty room. Alright then. The industrial space has that kind of languorous feel that night-time places have when you happen upon them in daylight, like they’re imperceptibly stretching and yawning.
The hardest of the edges are taken off with a profusion of parlour palms and monsteras. There are fleeces and sheepskins draped over a jumble of furniture that you’ll remember from the carpark. Turntables are prominently situated and there’s vinyl on display. Patti LaBelle, Tone Loc, sure. Glenn Miller? I note that the menu is much reduced from the ones I saw around opening time last autumn, with Italian charcuterie and Irish cheese plates replacing cooked dishes. That’s fine, I’ve only got one thing on my mind. Well, one thing and some oysters. I’m told that the oysters are currently somewhere between Kerry and here. Damn you DHL.
That means that we’re having the shrimp. It also means that I can’t have a Bloody Mary because it comes with one of those briny bivalves. I console myself with an unimpeachable martini. This is a serious cocktail bar with serious drinks. Some may quail at the €18 tab for the shrimp but they are native, superbly sweet and bursting with fresh ozone. These beautiful little crevettes have been deep fried so you could eat them whole if you’re a tough guy. We do that with a couple before concluding that chewing chitin sucks. Peel ‘em.
Let’s get down to it – that goddamn burger. Holy cow. This is what happens when a very skilled kitchen turns its attention to something normally beneath its consideration. Every single component is exactly as it should be. The profound bovinity of the beef, the grade of the grind, the cooking perfectly a point, the house pickles, the molten Templegall and that shiitake miso butter. The potato bun from No Messin’ Bakery has the structural integrity to keep those juices off your wristwatch. This is nothing less than the ne plus ultra of (bar) burgers in Dublin and one of the best I have ever eaten, anywhere. Oh and those chips that come with it, they’re the f**king best too. Triple-cooked, deeply burnished and seasoned like someone was salting an icy stretch of pavement, when I drag them through the house aioli I’m reduced to just shaking my head at the plate, thinking about the next time.
The beef responsible for this comes from fatted ex-dairy cows from Ireland’s oldest Jersey herd from Woodtown in Meath and Davidson (an-ex butcher himself) has been instrumental in bringing it to market, and our mouths. I salute you sir. Dessert looks so fun it should be accompanied by a sound effect, maybe the silly swoop of a slide-whistle. When the server places it down we all grin at it and then at each other. It’s a rude yoghurt soft-serve swirled with blackberry (beetroot and pepper also feature) and it’s a knock-out.
Here are two very different places coming in very different ways to perhaps the two very best lunch dishes (by dint of terrific value and sheer perfection respectively) that Dublin has to offer right now.
So there’s the bow on it – on one side a lowly bar standing up straight to raise its food offering and on the other a high-end restaurant stooping to conquer the casual stuff. It’s like my wife always says – it’s all about the high-low mix.
Words: Conor Stevens
Images of Caribou – Killian Broderick
30 Stephen St
Dublin 2
1 Three Locks Sq
Dublin 2
