Borgo is a new restaurant in an old bank building that was once home to Loretta’s, at one point itself a new restaurant albeit in a slightly younger space. I liked the previous tenant very much almost in spite of the guff spouted about ‘up and coming Phibsborough’ at the time. It was (and remains) a place where the most notable residents repose rent-free in nearby Glasnevin. The operators of this new ‘osteria locale’ have grasped the bellows to wheeze new life into the space nevertheless, and early reviews suggest folks seem to be picking up what they’re putting down. But I’m not one for early reviews. I keep my hot-takes holstered. Comet was an aberration, as were the others. I’m here to talk about the thing that is no longer the new thing.
Hera is the previous opening from the Borgo people, who can also count Achara and Crudo within their stable. These guys are nothing if not fecund. You can refer to it as a gastropub if you like, I feel that the expression has outworn its meaning at this point. I’m eighty-sixing it from my lexical menu. I don’t even care for the term ‘Gastro’ appearing next to these reviews. Whatever. Others can debate whether a pub can be at once a restaurant and a pub — it’s more interesting to understand that Hera and Juno are expressions of the same mother-deity, (Greek and Roman respectively) and that their namesake concepts exist under the same roof in a revivified boozer on dear old Dorset St, not a place generally associated with a conversance with the classics.
Juno, when it opened two years ago was a more modest proposition with more modest ambitions (comparatively about as modest as a drop-out stoner in a Leinster road basement bedsit). Deep-fried things abounded. It was fun. I recall bringing my own apothecary-sized bottle of olive brine to facilitate a martini. If you don’t nurture affectations in middle age they will wane. Also bringing a prop to a review is a cheap way to buy yourself a couple of sentences. That was not a good drink — It was the colour of a cola cube (owing to the addition of Martini Rosso) and tasted like a hyper-limited Calpol x MSG release. It was though delivered with such bushy-tailed enthusiasm that I felt compelled to choke at least some of it down. Hera brings some of that same zeal but it’s immediately apparent that the past 24 months have brought a lot of learnings to these young restaurateurs.
I personally learned a long time ago that I don’t care to sit at high-top tables and yet on a balmy evening in the dog-days of Summer with the heady perfume of the Royal Canal drifting through the open doors I find myself perched on one, jammed inelegantly against the side of the bar. I had booked it secure in the belief that I could talk my way onto a better table but I guess I’m not as persuasive as I once was. The tables through the arch in the light-filled room on the canal side are the ones you want. No matter, I have an uninterrupted view of the glass-polisher and blu-roll supply behind the bar. Perhaps they should promote it as the bar-tender’s table.
The menu suggests a devil-may-care maximalism (lots of things going on in every dish!) and ranges hungrily around Europe (generally) in search of big swings on bold flavours. You have my attention. We pick at a plate of Basque Ox Chorizo and it tastes like something that Hemingway might have enjoyed with a drink. It certainly works well with my martini – this time a paragon of the form. The crudo that comes next is no slouch either. These migrated from the west coast of the U.S (via Italia) to Manhattan’s menus in the early oughts and have now attained a level of ubiquity the (restaurant) world over. They’re a kind of signifier that your restaurant has a sunny disposition. I’m not blessed with one of those but I’m always happy to begin dinner with some citrus-spritzed raw-ish fish. The one here, a special on this night, is positively therapeutic — if not a cure for misanthropy then at least a salve against sad-sackness.
Firm pieces of Bream are bathed in a liquor taut with lime and green tomatoes. There’s a briskness of mint and cucumber. We are talking about the soupier cevichey end of the crudo spectrum here. It was every bit the match of one I had a couple of days later at Lena but I can’t recall that because it was on my own dime.
The menu description — Brown butter baked scallops, broad beans & brown shrimp, anchovy & vermouth dressing, morcilla pangrattato — should give you some impression of the more-is-more approach. It ate very well indeed. House-Made Gnocchi (I should hope so) brings stout, dumpy dumplings languishing in a ridiculously moreish Ragu Bianco with Smoked Pork and anchovy. If you wanted to cavil (or agree with my wife) you could say that the mince could be a little less toothsome, a little more tender. I don’t (want to cavil that is, not disagree with my wife). Nevertheless, it’s a deeply satisfying plate of food, each pillowy mouthful more comforting than the last. Bravo.
I’ll be back to try the fish-pie. Possibly the Chicken and Pancetta meatballs too. A slice of very nicely prepared Brown Butter and Miso Tart sent us out into the night just the right side of replete. You’re not coming here for delicate flavour profiles — Hera does punchy and then likes to (liberally) rub salt in the wounds. This kitchen wants to give you the slaps at every turn — nutritional yeast, brown butter and miso all pile on to deliver big butch hits, and that’s just fine.
You’re in the former Red Parrot on Dorset St, not some hoity-toity, laminated-pastry pocket of Stoneybatter, this is the actual true-blue, die or do Northside. Roll with the punches or slink back across the river. Service is young and charming and feels animated by the knowledge that the food being ferried from the pass is a little special. Everyone knows the menu inside-out and seems happy to share it. It’s a simple recipe that many other places would do well to copy.
Ambition doesn’t need attitude and these plates require no posturing. There’s a concise, well curated wine list with things worth drinking by the glass and bottles to satisfy both sides of the divide. On the cocktail side it’s no longer a BYO brine place neither. Hera is well priced and possessed with a real sense of itself. More like this please folks.
Words: Conor Stevens
Photographs: Killian Broderick
58 Dorset St
Dublin 1
