There are two reasons why we love restaurants, and those reasons are called Damo and Suzi.
Damien and Suzi have just opened 505 in Dingle. You might have known them from their thrilling cooking in Kingdom 1795 in Killorglin, or maybe from their time at Screebe Lodge in Connemara.
As a team, they are restaurant poetry in motion, his cooking, her service. There isn’t a better double act at work today, two maverick talents working together to draw the magic of food and wine out of the ether.
People who know their work revere their work, swooning at Damien’s ability to spin gold from base materials, marvelling at Suzi’s ability to have exactly the right wine to match Damo’s culinary alchemy, and her ability to express her deep knowledge of wine with wit and originality – eg when our La Maldicion Tempranillo made by Marc Isart needed to be a little cooler, Suzi said that it “just needed a bit of Spanx.”
Exactly. Three minutes in the ice bucket and it was Spanxed to perfection.
In 505 they have the room their precious culinary aesthetic has always needed – lean, stylish, welcoming and lovely – which means that in Dingle we have the right people in the right place, doing the right thing.
And boy but they are doing the right thing.
505 is a restaurant lover’s restaurant, offering the ethos, the practice, and the sheer pleasure of a restaurant. Its essence is somewhat ineffable, meaning you can’t quite put your finger on what makes it special, what makes it unique. It has a mood, it has a vibe but, above all, it has Damo and Suzi. They make it special.
That special groove fits just right with Dingle’s culture of distinguished cooking, which ranges from totemic figures like Pat Moore and Stella Doyle to contemporary masters like Martin Bealin, Mark Moriarty and Nicky Foley.
So, Suzi’s wine list: magic. Know that bit in Succession where Tom rhapsodises about the allure of a glass of “the cold white wine.” Start with a glass of the Heinrich Naked White from Austria and, in a single sip, you are into that hallowed space. Pair it with one of Patrick O’Sullivan’s dainty oysters with aged celeriac vinegar and horseradish and dinner begins with an earthquake.
The house sourdough is made using a 12-year-old starter, and it is a textbook sourdough. The menu offers six smaller plates and three mains and centres on seafood – Glenbeigh mussels; Porcupine Bank langoustine; cured mackerel, dry-aged hake – with a veggie dish of Mary Walsh’s beetroots, lamb breast with kohlrabi, and a Dexter short-rib with komatsuna and mustard.
There are two puddings, and a cheese course of Young Buck served with a warm scone and damson and walnut. Restaurant economics in the far flung provinces being what they are, you are asked to order 3 courses. You will, of course, want to order every single thing on offer.
Damien’s imagination is both deeply real and deeply surreal. A trio of scallops have Maharees carrots for the sauce, with Annascaul wasabi leaf, and shards of grapefruit. No one else would put those ingredients together and, when you eat the dish, you wonder why no one else puts those ingredients together. The dish is deeply rooted in West Kerry, whilst putting the astronomical in gastronomy.
Cured mackerel is torched with the fruity aji amarillo chilli, with pineapple and radish. If the pairing seems mutant, the reality is a dish where we see Damien showcasing the majesty of mackerel, one of the greatest fish, in an unlikely and original fashion, the sweet chilli and pineapple sending volts of ASMR satisfaction that upend your expectations.
We chose the two seafood mains – wild stonebass with mushroom, Madeira, blackberry and hazelnut; and dry-aged hake with pistachio, nasturtium and Goatsbridge trout roe. Both showcased pitch-perfect technique: fish of pearlescent hue and rich sweetness under a mantilla of crisply rendered fish skin, the hake abundant with trout roe and tangy nasturtium leaves, the stonebass a stone-cold classic with a rubble of hazelnut and a necklace of foraged black berries.
Damien and Suzi never take their foot off the pedal, so whilst some kitchens might take it easy with the side dishes, in 505 the vegetables were a thrill unto themselves: hay-smoked potatoes with a confetti of chives; fresh kale with roasted butternut squash with a sesame seed dressing; and a salad of fresh leaves from nearby Annascaul with a lemongrass and jalapeno dressing.
Earlier in the day we met some friends who were raving about the Young Buck blue cheese served with a warm scone, damson and walnut they had enjoyed the night before. People blessed with a capacious appetite will order the puds and then the cheese, whilst another solution to the two people vs three choices is to order the scone and cheese and spirit it away in your manbag, thereby offering you the definitive Breakfast of Champions the following morning when you wake up in your Dingle rental.
But we were mad keen to try the other pair of puddings: Amaretto baba with raspberry, almond and meadowsweet, and single origin 70% Virunga chocolate with Connemara whiskey and maple.
The puddings were somehow doused with unicorn dust, ethereal creations that danced on the tongue before sending your reward system skywards. Amaretto and baba cake are besties, but it took Damo to realise this before cloaking the cake in a pillow of almond and meadowsweet and bolstering it with raspberries. The Virunga came as both a slinky quenelle of chocolate mousse and a moat of chocolate shards girded with whiskey and maple. Yumville.
Damien cooks, Suzi runs the room, and together they are creating nothing less than magic in 505, one of the outstanding examples of contemporary Irish cooking. 505 forensically adduces every proof of why we love restaurants. Do not even think of making the trip to Dingle without a reservation at 505.
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