In the Hiberno-English parlance and certainly the patois of our city — the word ‘bang’ has a usage (leaving aside its conjugation as a verb) beyond the conventionally received ones of a loud noise or impact. I’m referring to its deployment to denote a whiff, an air, a perceived impression, an aura. Things, people, ideas can have a bang of something about them – generally unintended and unwanted.
Opened just before the turn of the millennium the restaurant Bang had a bang of not really being about the food. The impression was that it was a place where food happened amid braying and getting hammered. It felt like a place where folks went to spend other people’s money — daddy’s, the company’s, whatever. It went out with a whimper before changing hands around 2010 to no interest of mine whatsoever.
Now though it is back with a… new team at the helm and a new sense of purpose. Bang is all of a sudden very interesting indeed. This third iteration (a re-revivification) debuted at the beginning of the year under the ownership and operation of Richie Barrett (scion of the previous owner) and business partner (and chef) Eric Matthews. This would seem to have been a shrewd move – by all accounts the pair have made a great success of Kicky’s, their previous venture together.
The web-copy states that ‘this chapter leans into Iberian-inspired cooking’. I can say that this is at once coy and modest – this is now a restaurant with direction and focus – and they are playing some of the very greatest hits that the region has in its repertoire. Think before booking spots at the counter – some offer vantage points for surveying dining-rooms, a little remove from the hub-bub. These do not. You are on a first-floor mezzanine – three stools face onto a very busy line of cooks, some working over live-fire. You are close enough to be getting paid and the heat is mid-Summer Madrid intense. We were whisked downstairs to the comfort of the basement while we still had eyebrows and this is where you’ll want to be. The walls are deep vermillion and the lighting is good. It’s a mildly suggestive space that feels gradually accommodating. You can feel yourself easing in.
We drive past the ‘Bites’ section of the menu without slowing down – these are things (olives, almonds, jamon etc) that you can eat in the comfort of your own casa if you buy from the right places, as they do here. If you’ve ever spent some hours of dissipation in one of Lisbon’s bars or tascas there’s a good chance that you got your laughing gear around one of Portugal’s ubiquitous steak sandwiches known as prego. It is so named for the Portuguese word for ‘nail’ because the beef is ‘nailed’ or studded liberally with shards of garlic before it hits the pan. Sign me up.
There is also a (somewhat bizarre and delightful) custom of serving it as ‘dessert’ following a feed of seafood. The one here from the ‘On Bread’ section of the menu is almost certainly better than the one you had and costs many times more too. The €18 price tag is explained by the inclusion of a thick tranche of perfectly rare fillet steak from Peter Hannan. It is ruby-red, has been aged for 40 days and is as tender as first love. It is housed in a pillowy little bun and anointed with sharp house mustard. Yes it’s a lot to pay for a three-bite sandwich and yes it is worth it. It is the ne plus ultra of pregos.
Some time has passed since I had the famed Cal Pep tortilla and my abiding memory of that evening is of the bats flittering above our heads on the square outside the restaurant after dinner. I was in town for a music festival so perhaps those murciélagos were just in my belfry. Nevertheless invoking the name of that Barcelona restaurant’s signature dish on your Baggot St restaurant’s menu is a move. I can’t say that it lives up to the name-drop but it is an excellent Spanish Tortilla, as much about texture as taste, unctuous and yielding with long-cooked onions and potatoes and finished with the garlic slap of unapologetic alioli.
You’ll note a theme here – there’s enough garlic going on in this joint to drive a vampire from a virgin’s neck. It does not need the addition of Gubbeen chorizo. While I’m on the subject I happened upon the best I’ve ever had last Autumn from the bus-station bar in the Asturian coastal town of Ribadesella. It was made by a little old lady known as Loli (Maria Dolores Garcia) who is regionally famous for her skill in their production, as the faded news-clipping pinned to the wall attested. Swing by if you’re ever in the neighbourhood. Fidueà resembles a kind of paella that swaps out short lengths of noodle for rice. It is cooked in the same kind of dustbin-lid pan and originates in Valencia. Regularly featuring mixed seafood, ours had rabbit and txistorra (a kind of Basque chorizo). The consistency was perhaps a little too pulpous but it ate well. It’s the kind of dish that one might enjoy being spoon-fed in their dotage.
All restaurants are now required to do some of their cooking over live fire. In many you would struggle to notice. Not so here. You could cook one of Peter Hannan’s 40-day aged ribeyes with a welder’s blowtorch and enjoy it – cooked here over lump-wood with the kiss of smoke amplifying the profound bovinity it reminds us why we order steaks in restaurants. Better still is some pristine, firm-fleshed monk-tail, perfectly judged with a little char and swimming in a golden pool of butter, lemon and parsley. It’s the best bit of fish cookery I’ve enjoyed since a superlative salt-baked wild bass I had in Santander last year.
I lose the argument so don’t get to taste the chocolate mousse with jamon Iberico fat caramel. I am instead rewarded with the finest rice-pudding (Arroz con leche) known to humanity, gently spiced and brightened with citrus zest. It calls for more spoon-feeding and I feel like I need to walk it off. The lay-out of the building remains baffling – you walk in and immediately climb stairs to the ‘ground’ floor. A trip to the bathroom is like engaging with an interactive MC Escher exhibit – you ascend steps only to find yourself at a lower level, people burst from unseen apertures. Corridors diverge meaninglessly. Take your phone with you.
The place still seems to attract a ‘fun’ crowd – when one table of refreshed middle-aged types begins (amicably) roaring across the table at each other over dessert it kicks off a sonic arms-race. A Mexican-sound-wave circles the room until I’m bellowing into my wife’s face to register my pique. It’s not just the olds – a seemingly civilised couple in their 20’s sees no problem in making a FaceTime call to a third party mid dinner – their logic perhaps that it’s okay to conduct this three feet from another table if you’re not speaking English. It is not. Poor manners are universally understood. This is just the way of things now.
Bang is an altogether more cohesive affair than Kicky’s, the tighter focus seems to suit Barrett and Matthews. Service throughout is warm, grown-up and attentive. Like Mongoose across town, it feels like an immediately essential Dublin restaurant. This is blue-sky cooking that takes you to sunny places you’ve loved and introduces you to a few others that you’d love to. This new Bang gang have nailed it. Mucho gusto. Kiss Kiss.
Words: Conor Stevens
Photographs: Killian Broderick
11 Merrion Row
Dublin 2
