As I write this we are languishing in the grey, damp dog-days of a Summer that never came close to putting out. Sure, there were a couple of teasing, flirty days in early June – the kind that raise expectations and hemlines but as the weeks spooled out our pale yearning faces remained un-sun-kissed and the season unconsummated. No blue skies for us, just blues. We now face into the long detumescence of Autumn, our fair-weather pleasure denied. Some of you may have been lucky enough to flee our dank island for a drier, brighter one where you briefly existed in an all-inclusive carefree torpor. Bully for you if so, I’m sure you deserved it.
Homer (not that one) describes such a place in Book IX of The Odyssey, when blown off-course for Ithaca his crew make landfall at the country of the Lotus Eaters. Initially identified as ‘a race that live on vegetable foods’ (E.V. Rieu, 1946) it soon becomes clear to Odysseus that the place is wholly inhabited by a race of inveterate caners, perpetually high-as-balls ‘on the honeyed fruit of the (lotus) plant’.
So intoxicating is the narco-paradise that the boxed AF seafarers need to be dragged back to their ship and placed in irons, still weeping to be displaced from this place of guilt-free, unrelenting pleasure. There’s a general consensus among classicists that this episode represents the first instance, the fons et origo of the phrase ‘don’t harsh my buzz’.
A different kind of buzz surrounds Lotus Eaters – a new ‘concept’ from the Pig’s Ear folks that occupies the same space on Nassau Street. It’s unclear whether The Pig’s Ear has ceased to exist or not. Right now both restaurants seem to exist simultaneously in some sort of multi-versal wrinkle. You are dining at Lotus Eaters but spectral reminders of The Pig’s Ear occasionally poke through. Like the branded wine-glasses. It feels like bets are being hedged. But that’s neither here nor there.
When you walk up to the first-floor space you find yourself in one of the loveliest dining rooms in town. Soft evening light slants through large casement windows that frame views of Trinity’s cricket grounds across the street. That view of the old alma mater is what sold the place to us as the venue for our wedding breakfast back in the day. It was called Jacob’s Ladder then and times were simpler.
The concept here and now for Lotus Eaters is Japanese-ish and I’m not sure how that pertains to such a specific passage from Homer’s epic poem but that’s fine. The naming of restaurants is extraordinarily difficult and highly specialised work. The menu is admirably concise and that’s a good thing – it tends to increase the odds that the kitchen will be good at executing the dishes.
In broad strokes you’re coming here to eat an omelette or a (bunless) burger and that’s just dandy. Who doesn’t like eggs, or burgers? On a recent Thursday evening the place was virtually empty so that question may linger. There are though interesting things to eat before you get to those main events. You could start with some oysters dressed with nam jim, a potent dipping sauce that you might find in Japan if you could find a Thai restaurant. Those will run you a fiver a pop.
Pairing scallops with black pudding is a very 1986 move but the 2024 version here eats quite well. The blood pudding leans closer to Spanish morcilla texturally than our own barley-laced blood sausage and there’s a buttery emulsion to bring land and sea together. It’s a good dish but it might feel more at home on the menu in sister-restaurant Spitalfields.
A Hamachi crudo is less successful. Also known as Japanese Amberjack or Yellowtail it has become ubiquitous on big city menus the world over, hastening in turn that moment when the world will indeed be over. The version here features flesh battened out to the point where you wonder if the guy who prepared is having a bad day. Also – we’re still in peak mackerel season here. It makes for good sashimi, it hasn’t been farmed or frozen. Fancy omakases are notorious for the air miles that they put on their seafood. It’s not an authenticity that we need to replicate. The yoghurt dressing doesn’t help matters. At this point we pause dinner to have a quick sandwich, because that’s what you get if you order the tartare. It’s a brioche sandwich and a good one but it should have been 86’ed when their sandwich pop-up ended some weeks previously.
As with shame, stationery and knife-making the Japanese have for centuries elevated the art of omelettry. One can only imagine what they could achieve with stiff squares of paper or pornography. The specimen here is a kind of hybrid of the tamagoyaki (folded) and omirice (filled) styles. You can get it with crab or mushroom or, if having a rush, accessorise with €30 worth (10g) of caviar. It’s quite the thing, arriving like a bulging, burnished manilla parcel. I ritually disembowel it and the guts spilled coyly outward, crabby and unctuous. There’s a good fistful of white crabmeat in there, bound maybe with a light bechamel. A superb preparation.
The needless spoonful of Asetra Caviar that costs more than the dish it adorns could use a little more fanfare. Somewhere between moonwalking it to the table amid plumes of dry-ice and dolloping it inelegantly onto a saucer would seem to be the sweet spot. Perhaps the best part of the burger order is the array of fixins it comes with, the worst is the realisation that you’ll need to deploy all of them to avoid becoming bored with the dish. It’s a competently cooked puck of wagyu mince with a slightly too sweet (for me) honey glaze. I don’t register the kiss of the charcoal grill. Hit it up with the house Togarashi, make use of the charred jalapeno relish and pickled ginger and it’s a pretty good time.
The concept is intended as an affordably-priced pivot away from the Pig’s Ear offering and if you avoid the add-ons to the mains (although the bone-marrow might benefit the burger) it generally achieves that. Lotus drinking comes with a steeper tariff though – the mark-ups on the by-the-glass wine list have been noted in a couple of places. We largely avoided it, although there might have been a couple of glasses of fizz. I had a couple of beers and some good sake. That sake though would have been better served in an eggcup than a tall stemmed wine glass. Service was as attentive as you’d expect in an empty restaurant.
I like the concision but I’m not sure that the menu doesn’t need a little more cohesion, a clearer focus. Nobody involved is half-assing it but you do get the impression that some proportion of ass is being held in reserve. There’s a lot to like nevertheless, I enjoyed my time with the lotus eaters but at no point was it apparent that I would need to be dragged home and restrained. Gods be with the days.
Words: Conor Stevens
Photographs: Killian Broderick
4 Nassau St
Dublin 2
