Damien Ring has all the moves. The dishes he is cooking in 505, his svelte and comfy Dingle restaurant, are fluent with true flavours, and in their artful difference they are a defining example of contemporary Irish cooking.
Ring likes to mix it up, and break with the conventions. Hazelnut satay with crab claws; 70% chocolate with miso; hake with nettles; oyster with stout vinegar.
These are dishes which suit being enjoyed during the Other Voices festival, because Damien Ring truly is another voice, a star soloist. You eat his food and quickly become an advocate, telling everyone you know that they have to eat it, too.
Damien’s food is compelling because of the well-tempered style which he brings to his ingredients, and because he is happy to go off piste, which is why you are eating squid noodles with sea lettuce and jalapeno, or a beef tartare flatbread.
But 505 isn’t quirky just to be quirky: it’s quirky because Damo likes to cook quirky, and has always done so for all the time we have known him and his food. Whilst he favours a style of cooking we might call leap-in-the-dark, his landing is always sure-footed.
We ate in 505 when it first opened and were blown away by the assurance and power of the dishes. A recent return visit showed the same inimitable inventiveness, and the same confidence: these dishes don’t miss.
Dinner begins with one of the best iterations of sourdough and butter, the butter whipped into a Brancusi whirl, the bread a powerhouse of crust and crumb. Dainty oysters are served with stout vinegar and horseradish, and you then choose between five starters and three mains, two of which are usually seafood, before a pair of desserts are joined by Damo’s iconic take on the Savoury: a Cheddar-grilled croissant with Beal Ban golden ale and onion treacle.
Our starters were dry-aged duck with beetroot, pear and black garlic, and the crab claws with cauliflower purée and hazelnut satay. In a decent world all crab claws would henceforth be cooked with hazelnut satay and cauliflower purée. The dish is a beauty, every bite a zing of salinity and a riot of sweetness that makes you feel that you will live forever.
The duck offered a lovely tangle of tastes, between the aged meat itself and the refreshing contrast of the pear and the beetroot, with nasturtium and rocket leaves offsetting the colour with their vivid greenery.
The hake came with pistachio, nettle and courgette and we actually asked Alice, who runs the room, how on earth Damo had managed to get so much flavour into the courgette slices, which scaled the fish pieces before they were anointed with pistachio crumb. This was such an imaginative dish, a series of twists and turns executed on the convention. Alice told us the slices were simply grilled, but our grilled courgette slices don’t get within a million miles of these green goddesses.
The Dover sole was ringed around a cloud of nduja XO sauce, with cabbage and bergamot, and again it was a winner all the way, beautifully unconventional seafood cooking. The cabbage was effortlessly flavourful, and the plating a million miles removed from the conventions that insist how flat fish such as sole should be served. Everything got cleared up with steamed potatoes served with the tiniest micro-shards of chives.
We shared a pudding of chocolate with sake, miso and amazake ice cream. Amazake is a traditional Japanese fermented hot drink that mixes cooked rice with water and rice koji. Damo ferments the drink for between 12 to 18 hours at 60C and then blends it into an ice cream base. Below it is the chocolate cremeux dotted with puffed sushi rice, and underneath that is a peanut and koji cake which has been soaked in sake, with a moat of white miso caramel. A little dusting of green cardamom powder puts the green shirt on this most Japanese of confections, a pudding which is in no way sweet, but whose series of umami crescendos makes it a perfect end to the meal.
The wine list comprises three pages of fine bottles, with a good choice by the glass, and it is worth noting that there is some exceptional value for money here. All around us the room filled up with punters, adroitly and quietly managed by Alice, and this was quickly followed by the delighted sounds of folk who were clearly discovering Damien’s cooking for the first time.
Having discovered this other voice in the Irish culinary canon, they will quickly become advocates for one of the most distinctive chefs at work today. So, if you find yourself heading to Other Voices, make sure you get to enjoy the most distinctive voice in Dingle.
~JMcK, Photography by Samuel McKenna
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We were in Dingle Sunday night and ate in our hotel. I walked past 505 and was impressed with the menu on display. Will have to try it out sometime.