That will teach me to try and wrangle a six-year-old into finishing his broccoli before leaving home. The brassica has bitten back. Broccoli is like sunshine in my book. You can never have too much of it. But I’m struggling to finish a small forest of the stuff. The batter on these butty florets is more of a speckled crunch than a light crispy coat. I need long stems cooked with a bit more finesse to eat this much broccoli in one sitting.
We’re in The Little Kitchen on a quiet stretch of Dublin’s Leeson Street. It’s an offshoot of The Vintage Kitchen, which opened in the dark back-street setting of Poolbeg Street three years ago, offering the happy combination of house-cooked food and a bring-your- own wine and vinyl. Seats have rarely been empty since.
I loved the Vintage Kitchen and I’m expecting to love its little sister. Instead I’m left a bit bewildered by it. First up is the booking mystery. I ask for 8pm but they don’t have a table until 8.30pm. Darn the pesky old internet, I think, this place has already been well and truly discovered. But no. It’s empty when I arrive.
As the night goes on we remain its only customers apart from a group of men I’m guessing are on a business meeting in a nearby hotel. At the end of the night they discuss the misogyny of Bond films, to the delight of my friend, who compliments their feminist sensibilities.
So everyone here is nice, the customers and the staff. But our table is wobblier than a coalition pact and the music is objectionable: heavy metal pumping at us from a tinny speaker over our heads. “Hate to be a Grady old lady,” Anne says. “But could you change the music?” They do. Phew. There’s good bread and a mustardy mayonnaise so it’s going to get better right?
At the start it does. It’s two courses for €30. That’s not exactly a steal. The sweetener is they don’t charge corkage on your own wine if you order two courses.
They've got a quite a lot in the way of serving equipment that isn't of the plate variety. There's a lidded pot for the chowder, a great creamy bowl of yellow soup with generous chunks of Donegal smoked haddock, chunks of chorizo finished with crunchy green strands of samphire. The chowder is good enough to not need the chorizo. My gratin of organic goats cheese comes on a board in a frying pan. There's a mix of beets, and slippery shards of sweet pearl onions, on top of which sits a fluffy quennelle of good goats cheese with two lacey parmesan crisps balanced on either side. The vegetables taste of vinegar and sugar, like a pre-chutney, rather than their own more subtle flavours.
The dish of the night is a long rectangular plate of Slaney river slow roasted lamb shank. Luscious sweet meat falls off the bone once it’s freed from its sticky outer layer of caramelised loveliness. A celeriac and garlic puree is a little too Cow and Gate smooth but tastes fine.
My “francese of broccoli” (No, me neither. Perhaps a nod to chicken francese?) comes on another wooden board, two frying pans this time one piled high with broccoli, the other with chunks of sweet potato in a creamy sauce topped with a roasted tomato. There’s a yellow pot of wasabi mayonnaise, which adds to the sense of collection of side dishes rather than a coherent vegetarian main.
We finish with a half-baked chocolate cake, so volcanically hot that the ice cream on top bubbles and starts to cook before cooling to a gluey finish. A trip to the loo involves stepping past a bin bag slumped against the door jamb.
It’s possible The Little Kitchen was having a bad day. It’s a kitchen that knows how to cook good ingredients well. But this isn’t Poolbeg Street and this offshoot doesn’t feel as ground- breaking as The Vintage Kitchen. The former Rigby’s a few doors down from here is being transformed into an offshoot of Forest Avenue so competition for casual dining cash will be keen. The Little Kitchen will need to grow up fast to thrive.
Dinner for two with one dessert (€6) and sparkling water came to €69.50.
