Look past the wine glasses in this Italian restaurant, writes TOM DOORLEY.
THE VAST, ECLECTIC and even encyclopaedic knowledge possessed by the readers of The Irish Timesnever ceases to amaze me. I know that somebody is bound to put me right, sooner or later.
I have a problem with wine glasses. Or to be precise, with knowing (or not knowing, in this instance) the name of a particularly pernicious one that infests the more mundane kind of hotel dining room and many – perhaps most – of our less impressive restaurants.
I have trawled the internet for, oh, a good 10 minutes, and have drawn a blank. So I must fall back on my severely limited powers of description.
The kind of glass of which I speak is unpleasantly thick. Unlike the humble but perfectly acceptable Paris goblet (which some wine snobs call the Paris giblet), it has the substance of a tumbler. It is also small and it starts life, just above the stem, as something resembling a tulip, as all good wine glasses do. But then it changes its mind and it takes a sudden inward dive to finish with straight sides.
It is of no use whatsoever to man or beast, assuming that both want to use it for drinking something other than water or fruit juice.
Proper wine glasses are genuinely tulip-shaped, and made from fairly thin glass. The best and cheapest are the ones known in the business as ISO tasting glasses, which are fine for drinking as well as tasting, but there are lots of fancy expensive ones that follow, more or less, this classic shape.
Anyway, the reason I mention this is that the first thing I noticed at Il Baccaro was that the wine glasses are the execrable ones mentioned above. Which is a shame, as Il Baccaro, the subterranean osteria on Dublin’s Meeting House Square, is not a bad place to eat, even if we ran the gamut of the menu only from A to B.
This was due to a somewhat intense conversation about mutual friends long lost and the mistaken notion that one of us was having the risotto with mushrooms, the other the Tuscan sausages and beans, whereas we were both having the latter.
This was after we had grazed on one of those mixed platters of what the French call charcuterie, which I believe was introduced to Ireland by the French Paradox, but now commonplace ever since we decided that this is a good-value way to eat.
Il Baccaro’s version was fine. It soaked up a shared 500ml decanter of rather nasty white wine (Il Baccaro, it seems, imports most of its own directly, something that for me underlines how the Irish wine trade actually does something useful). The red was eminently drinkable.
The duplicated main course (which is a cardinal sin for restaurant critics and I apologise unreservedly for this rare oversight), was good, rib-sticking stuff. The bean is not very interesting in itself.
Oh yes, I know that young broad beans, eaten fresh, are snapping at the heels of asparagus and garden peas for sheer summer delight, but the average dried bean is merely a texture or a vehicle for flavours.
In this instance, they provided a rich and savoury counterpoint to the Tuscan sausages, split down the middle and both moist and salty. This was a hearty, very pleasant dish and, salt aside, fairly healthy.
It was certainly not the sort of food you get in the red-sauce joints that pass for the average Italian restaurant, and a useful reminder that Tuscany, beloved of the kind of English tourists who travel with the Daily Telegraph and Cooper’s Oxford Marmalade (hence Chiantishire), is keen on the bean.
I tend to agree with my good friend Paolo Tullio that panna cotta (literally, cooked cream) should ideally be in a state of near collapse when dished up. Here, it comes in a ramekin, which we shared, and tastes good while being, perhaps, a bit too stiff.
The bill came to €90.95, including some marinated olives that failed to set the world alight.
THE SMART MONEY
A carefully chosen main course and glass of house wine will yield change from €20.
WINE CHOICE
The house white, Vernaccia di San Gimignano Cantina Certaldo, might be only 11.5% abv and €15 for a half litre, but it’s pretty horrible. The Sangiovese house red, at €15.30 a half litre, is good value. Le Bombarde Cannonau di Sardegna is a good, chunky red at €29.50. Other offerings include Barolo at €51.70 and Amarone at €54.
Read Megabites, Tom Doorley’s blog on all things foodie, at irishtimes.com/blogs/megabites