We’ve all heard of greenwashing, but what do you call it when a trio of big-name chefs – Richie Castillo, Daren Liew, and Alfred Prasad – are parachuted in to design a menu, only to vanish faster than a waiter when you need the bill? Chef-washing? Name-dropping? Whatever it is, Kaldero, the new restaurant from the Press Up Hospitality Group, does it with gusto.
Richie Castillo of Filipino pop-up Bahay fame? As láthair. Alfred Prasad, India’s youngest Michelin-starred chef, and Daren Liew, the Cantonese maestro? Presumably back at their desks in London, brainstorming menus for their next “collaboration”. It would be fine if it was clear, but when the first image on the Kaldero website is a picture of the three chefs, followed by moody black and white shots of them in the kitchen, expectations are set.
In fairness, there were no promises that they’d be manning the stoves during service in this smartly outfitted room, and our charming waiter confirms that “no”, they had not. When I visit, Ryan Bell, a Press Up stalwart since 2015, commands the pass as diligently as a chef led by standard operating procedures.
Kaldero claims to be Dublin’s newest “premium Asian eatery” and promises to bring the bold and vibrant culinary traditions of the Philippines, Southeast Asia and India to life. A gastronomic passport, if you will, which I soon discover is less of a culinary tour and more of a long-haul flight in economy with my knees pressed against the seat in front.
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The menu includes 15 small plates – dynamite lumpia, chicken 65, scallops and the like – six mains, a handful of sides and three desserts, all basking in the reflected glow of their absent creators.
First, the good news: the dynamite lumpia (€11) – pork mince and smoked scamorza stuffed into a green chilli and swaddled in spring roll pastry – tastes exactly as it should, according to Steve, who spent considerable time in the Philippines. The kabute (€11), stir-fried Garryhinch oyster mushrooms in bagoong XO sauce with a soy-cured egg yolk, also hits the mark.
As for the cocktails, Gareth Lambe of Vintage Cocktail Club fame delivers the goods. The masala mango sour and tamarind old fashioned (€14 each) are excellent – a brief moment of clarity before the evening takes a hard left into mediocrity, where a decent drink quickly becomes more necessity than luxury.
The kitchen runs like an assembly line, churning out plates at breakneck speed, which stack up on our table like lost luggage in a budget airline terminal. You have to wonder if the new majority shareholders (Cheyne Capital) are timing them with a stopwatch. Two prawn and lobster spring rolls arrive, prompting the question of whether they forgot the lobster entirely. The prawns, I later discover, took the scenic route via the North Atlantic, and the lobster? If it was there, it was barely in evidence. €18 for this?
The Chicken 65 (€12) arrives as uninspired chicken nuggets – cuboid, flavourless, and joyless, as if they’d been focus-grouped by people who hate spice. The tofu kare kare (€13) has nicely fried tofu, but not enough – it’s mostly aubergine in the dish, and comes in a muted peanut sauce.
And then we hit the large plates, which I naively expect to be hearty, generous sharing dishes. The “seafood sizzling clay pot” has all the sizzle of a damp tea towel. Two frozen queen scallops, four North Atlantic prawns and a sliver of farmed sea bass are meticulously portioned out and dropped into a sauce so pedestrian you could use it as road paint. A jolting reminder of who’s running the joint. At €34, it’s an insult of a dish – and it doesn’t even come with a side.
For dessert, the chocolate mousse with toasted coconut and a few slices of kiwi (€9) will no doubt be fine for anyone who automatically springs for chocolate desserts, but in reality, it’s a gluey mousse, shell-piped along an oblong plate pretending that it’s interesting.
Kaldero isn’t so much a restaurant as a business plan – a calculated attempt to slap high-end chefs’ names on to a menu to justify prices that far exceed their quality. What you get instead is a melting pot in the most literal sense – ingredients dropped into an industrial-sized cauldron. You can almost hear the London bean counters fumbling in greasy tills, tallying margins as the food limps to the table. It’s culinary gaslighting.
Dinner for two with two cocktails and two beers was €149.
The Verdict: The Press Up gaslighting is the taste that lingers.
Food provenance: Manor Farm, Andarl Farm, FX Buckley, Glenmar Seafood, Nick’s Fish and La Rousse.
Vegetarian options: Honey chilli potatoes, tofu kare kare, aubergine lumpia and burrata chaat.
Wheelchair access: No accessible room or toilet.
Music: She She She & Piya Malik, and soul in the background.
