So I got to thinking about restaurant locations and wondering whether (and how) their placement meaningfully affects my experience of patronising them. Yes, the long nights are drawing in. I’m not referring to exotica here – not the place at the edge of Valentia Island where the Atlantic itself seemed to season the Paella or the lean-to forty clicks south of Hanoi where the still-beating cobra-heart was served in a shot-glass. I’m talking about where new places materialise in the city and whether ‘the where’ moves me. It should be said though that I’m gratified that any restaurants are opening anywhere in Dublin right now. The closures are getting too close together. Regardless – as intrepid digital gastronaughts we always want modish food pioneers to strike out in maverick directions – to revivify unloved corners of our towns and cities and give us reasons to deviate from the normies. Think of those dispatches from social mediators where they sample rough-trade tacos in places like edgy Inchicore.
When these terra(s) irredenta become Shoreditches or Williamsburgs we then get to bathe in the bifurcated pleasure of denouncing the gentrifiers while pitying the folks who are always four years late to the party. Bushwick’s over man, I’m moving to Monasterboice. It’s a tough beat. On the other hand you have the age thing – when you’ve weathered a certain number of winters, done the coupler’s will, you maybe begin to wish that your favourite places were a little closer to the (literal) crib. Sometimes you imagine this to be true. Stoneybatter does have Grano though.
If that paragraph seemed a little scattershot it’s because I thought all of it verbatim in a restaurant using one of those new AI thought-to-text apps. It’s in beta, bear with us. So as I was thinking – Aston Quay feels like an odd place for a restaurant but maybe that’s just me. As a kid it felt like a place of perpetual flux, just so many people and the diesel-belching buses that served them. Without wishing to step on the toes of BrandNewRetro© – if I squint my brain I can almost remember the McBirney’s department store that occupied much of the block. Their tag-line ‘Only forty paces from O’Connell Street’ now reads like a dark warning from an American travel blog.
In the 80s McBirney’s became the Virgin Mega Store, which for younger readers does not refer to jihadi Valhalla but rather to a kind of aspirational music store that also blazed a trail by selling French letters, a rudimentary kind of population control introduced to the Free State by the late Nell McCafferty. Achara opened some months back on this unloved stretch in the former Happy Endings space with ownership citing the VAT increase as the final nail in that restaurant’s coffin. They should be glad that they persevered with the space because this is perhaps the first happy ending to ever sire a successor.
They have pivoted to Thai food and the wheeze here is that the food is being cooked over charcoal which of course is no longer a wheeze but something of a requirement. Everyone and his brother has been bee-essing about their grilling game for years now, often with little evidence to support the claims. That’s not the case here. There’s a welcome embrace of smokey perfume the moment you walk through the door. On an uncharacteristically bright Sunday afternoon the room is filled with light but not a lot else. We join a few other early(ish) adopters rattling around like beans in a can. The light-filled room is pleasant in a rattan, blond-wood-post-colonial style and if I push my chair back a little I can just make out the guano-pollacked countenance of the Emancipator.
Any thoughts of the struggle for home rule are soon side-lined though by a succession of thoroughly transporting dishes. You will want to start with a couple of orders of those Killary Fjord Mussel skewers. They are plump, tender, smokey, gently spiced and worth another round of sherbetty rhubarb gimlets. The teak-brown peanut sauce that accompanies a plate of prawns is nothing short of thrilling. There’s profound bass-notes of flavour backed with the high treble of lemongrass. Fingers are sucked with lusty relish around the table. You could have a plate of Goatsbridge Trout Ceviche with mint and dill if you don’t like to get dirty before dark.
You’ll be faced with seven choices of sharing plates. All of these choices are good ones. Basil Chilli Beef Krapao featuring McLoughlins Irish Wagyu is so deeply savoury and complex that I’m wondering if the waves of flavour will ever stop. It’s topped with a delightfully described bubbly egg! Pork Belly moo hong features a beautifully rendered slab of Salters free-range swine and again points up the pride in provenance that you’ll find across the menu. Chillies are deployed liberally across that menu but heat levels generally are not those of the Isan cuisine you’ll find around the corner in Full Moon Thai.
If you do want to play Captain Birdseye consider the XO Mushroom Larb – parcel up some liberally spiced oyster mushrooms in a lettuce ‘cup’ with shards of crisp radish and fragrant ‘holy’ basil. Feel the burn. Basil Chilli Aubergine is a silky and sexy dish that non vegetarians need to experience. Don’t lose sleep if you don’t have room for dessert, the charred pineapple is well intentioned but a little harmless. There’s a wine list that has been put together by people who enjoy drinking it and cocktails by folk who know how to have a good time. I’ll be back for that bloody Mary!
Sometimes in restaurants that identify as casual the service can feel slack and disconnected but there is a middle ground between genuflection and slinging hash. They’ve nailed the balance here. We were looked after across two visits by effervescent floor manager Lara who runs the room with engaging charm and knowledge. I’ve always had a soft spot for Croats. From the pleasingly mismatched crockery to the giant coconut milk tins there’s a kind of goofy grace to the way the place works, a loose janky rhythm that, combined with the huge flavours and sense of fun, reminds me of when Danny Bowien first brought Mission Chinese to Manhattan’s Lower East Side. You might even notice his book sitting with others (Black Axe Mangal etc) in an unruly heap by the hostess station.
There’s value for money across the board – most notably in the scarcely believable €15 midweek lunch deal. I imagine that those tables will need to be turned enthusiastically for the venture to work. Do yourself a favour and do your bit. Most of the people thronging the pavement outside seem to be waiting for buses – they’re here to get to someplace else. I very much hope that this place sticks around for the long haul. The buses are electric now, so is Achara.
Words: Conor Stevens
Images: Norma Burke
14 – 18 Aston Quay
Dublin 2
