Kaldero, Dublin
Hit Me Baby, One More Time
There is a visceral quality to Richie Castillo’s cooking. Others may smooth the edges and subdue the textures of their food when they put on their chef’s toque, but Castillo isn’t having any of that. His food is the wild ride, the walk on the wild side, the start-me-up.
And, of course, he doesn’t wear a toque.
Instead, what you get at Kaldero is punky, grungy, real Filipino street food, and it’s a blast. It is fiery, and true, and the dishes have such monster flavours that we reckon this fine, slick room in the centre of Dublin is going to be party central most every night of the week.
Castillo builds his dishes on the Holy Trinity of Filipino food: salty; sour; and sweet. When he hits the target, then the blessed trio act as pure head-wreckers, dopamine bombs. In their book, Masarap, Castillo and his partner, Alex O’Neill, write that the combo works “like a punch in the face that shocks you, then immediately makes you want to experience it again and again.”
Hit me baby, one more time.
The fact that Castillo has not filtered the funk even one iota in Kaldero’s move from the tabernacle of the Bahay food truck into the svelte sleekness of the former Wagamama room is a big deal indeed.
When people trade up, they usually smarten up, and Kaldero certainly does that with the service, the drinks, all of the peripherals, which are beautifully, seemingly effortlessly, achieved. The team here act like they have worked in lockstep with each other for years, in between serious evening class study at Charm School.
But the cooking socks you in the jaw, pulls at your taste buds like a pug, and has you calling for more. Filipino food, like other ethnic cuisines such as Thai and Korean, offers a set of flat-out-irresistible dishes that are in the process of taking over the world, and here they are: chicken skewers with banana ketchup; green chilli stuffed with pork mince and smoked scamorza; bavette with soy and calamansi; stir-fried mussels with sweet pork mince; caramel flan with dilisk salt.
These are plates of happiness for people of all ages, the dishes you can eat again and again.
But if you have the temperament to meander onto the wilder side, then dishes such as tempura mushrooms with tamarind salt and whipped tofu, or crispy pig’s ear with pork jowl and confit egg yolk, or oxtail with roasted peanut sauce, show that the salty-sour-sweet trinity works especially well with left-field ingredients.
The tempura oyster mushrooms almost levitate over the plate, little saline clouds of desire, whilst the chicken skewers, served in pairs on a banana leaf, are fated to become Insta stars for ’26. If you do order the crispy pig’s ears, then don’t be surprised to find yourself asking: “But where have you been all my life?!” The Kaldero version, with pork jowl and confit egg yolk, in a chew-fest of delight that would convert any sceptic. We also tried the adobo squid with white soy and green peppercorn, and the bone marrow with corn cob, beef and cabbage in a depthless broth that could raise Lazarus.
“Food is emotional. Food is nostalgic. Food is identity. Food is culture.” Richie and Alex wrote in Masarap. It’s likely that at some point as you are eating dinner in Kaldero that one or two – or maybe even all – of these portals will open up for you, as you bite on some chicken inasal or a piece of kabocha squash with kalapa curry sauce. This is cooking delivered with heart and soul, powerhouse food that shocks you, with delight.
Related:
White Pepper
The natural borders of the globe are defined by herbs and spices, not by fences and walls.