Tapas time

So after a great night in Fade Street Social a few weeks ago, we returned last night.  Having ate in the main restaurant on our last visit we ate in the Tapas bar this time.

I love Tapas.  I enjoy the ease and familiarity of ordering a pile of food and having it arrive at the table at different times.  It makes for sociable eating as everyone digs in and shares the food.

Here's a few pics of some of the food we ordered:

Potatoes cooked in beef dripping

Mini burger which tastes awesome but is grossly overpriced, there should be 3 of these on the plate to make them better value

Large portion of beef cooked medium rare: divine!

Mini lobster roll - cute, adorable, tasty and not seen on many Irish menus

A mini chicken covered in caramelized onions and some type of cured meat

Dessert of chocolate mousse with hazelnut ice cream - this was very good!

Individual banoffee (my favourite dessert)

Overall I love the food and atmosphere in Fade Street Social it is such a buzzy place.  However, I do think the tapas menu is overpriced and there is just not enough food on the plate for certain dishes to justify the price (I'm looking at you lobster roll & mini burger).  

In comparison, have a look at our dinner in Santiago's Bodega - we generally spend about 100 dollars here (including wine & tip) and leave absolutely stuffed having eaten about 8 dishes between us.   In Fade Street we dropped 105 euro, had about 6 dishes between the two of us and were not full at all.  I think Fade Street could knock about 30% off the tapas prices which would allow for guests to order a few more dishes.  They could also double or triple the portion size of some of the more teeny weeny dishes.

BTW, I should mention we ordered a bottle of malbec which was delicious at dinner but today has given me the typical malbec headache - tannins!!!

Fade Street Social

We were meant to go to Dylan McGrath's Fade Street Social a few weeks ago. However our friend who was organizing the night couldn't get a reservation so we ended up eating elsewhere.

Today was such a nice day we cycled in to town (me on my bike, Ciaran on a Dublin Bike). After sauntering around for a bit we went to Fade Street Social for lunch. We ate at the bar which was buzzy and fun. It was tapas in this part of the restaurant (the Gastro bar) - the restaurant proper opens later. I was disappointed to hear that they were out of both lobster (there was a lobster hot dog that sounded great) and cod - a busy weekend obviously!

Some of the pics below are of what we had. Ciaran ordered what was called a burger on the menu but when it came out it was really a slider - he wasn't surprised as for €9 it was all he was expecting. However, I do think they should consider amending the menu.

We also had Chinese pork belly with peanut brittle - this was way too fatty - I wouldn't order it again even though the flavours were good.

I had a charred tuna loin. Amazing! Cooked perfectly rare with what I thought was artichoke (I think) and dill.

Ciaran had chicken with caramelised onions with parma ham. And we also ordered skinny fries with onion purée and Parmesan truffles.

The chips were disapointingly frozen chips.

We had a carafe of Malbec which was very tasty and made a good pairing with the food.

I'll let the pictures do further talking.