Five years ago, Niall Davidson succinctly laid out his mantra for Allta: “I want this to be fun and informal, with super-serious food” he told The Irish Times.
With a top-flight trio behind him – Hugh Higgins, Christine Walsh and, later, Kevin Burke – Davidson and his crew took the deepest breath and showed Dublin what a deep dive into contemporary Irish food could achieve: super-serious cooking, served with a smile, and buoyed by a philosophy that took the diner down deep to the source of the artisans whose graft allowed Allta to cook the things they wanted in the way they wanted.
Davidson’s deep dive into the mechanics of a restaurant went further than any other newcomer. Every detail had been thought through, from the colour of the side plates to the fact that the kitchen produced virtually every ingredient it used. Davidson was making it difficult for himself, and he was only starting.
Allta was a wow! but Davidson was soon on his way to making life even more of a practical nightmare, somehow mastering the logistics of producing 10,000 meal kits of Allta food boxes during lockdown, then opening Allta Summer House in an outdoor construction at Slane Castle, County Meath, in 2021, followed by Allta Winter House, on the top two floors of the multi-storey car park on Trinity Street in Dublin.
Tents. Car parks. Lockdowns. Art galleries. Food boxes. Boat houses. “We need to keep moving forward” Davidson told The Irish Times. The moveable feast moves ever on.
Davidson moves forward for the same reasons that free-divers swim downwards: he has to do it. And now 2024 brings the new Allta – Mark IV – in Dublin’s Docklands, where Davidson dives deeper than ever before.
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