Restaurant review: Shining a light on super Solas

Is that a frog in my throat, a dust mote in my eye as the old familiar road winds us in closer to Dingle. Am I, dare I say it, a tad emotional?

My history with Dingle stretches back to childhood when I lived in the Gaeltacht for eight months of my life, west of the town, on a small farm in An Riasc, but over the last decade or so, I’ve evolved a next-generation family history, returning with my own family each October for the Dingle Food Festival and the Blás na hÉireann Irish food awards.

Autumn is a lovely time in the West Kerry fishing town, better again during the festival, when the air crackles with collective joy and the streets are ‘dubh le daoine’, visitors and locals alike. It’s often shoulder to shoulder as the pack shuffles en masse, grazing from street stalls, filling up pubs, restaurants, shops and other random, often quirky venues that become part of the festival’s taste trail over the weekend. It is one of my most favourite of all Irish food festivals, the one that usually signs off yet another year of gallivanting around the country, before hunkering down for the winter.

But thanks to the you-know-what, it has been three years since last we made this trip and there is an especially keen edge to our anticipation. With bags barely unpacked, No 1 Son and I hightail it down for a brief tour of local hostelries before dinner, culminating in an absolutely electric Dick Mack’s, heaving with festival revellers, and it takes an enormous force of will to leave and join SpouseGirl and La Daughter in Solas for our evening’s repast.

Actually, Solas is cresting a similar wave: windows are fogged, bodies crammed into the bijou space, as an exuberant clientele in full festival mode cranks up the volume, condensing a whole three years of foregone parties into a single night.

Claustrophobics might steer clear but we’re up for the fiesta, squeezing in, and ordering up a clatter of plates as if food were about to go out of fashion.

Fine olives are from La Mancha, the agricultural heart of Spain; these, plump, green (Gordal varietal?) and mildly briny, perfect to whet appetites. Next, a take on classic pan con tomate, here superbly executed with top drawer local ingredients: wonderful grilled sourdough comes from the excellent Bacús Dingle bakery and heritage tomatoes are sweated down confit-style with no more than salt, garlic and good olive oil, their tart sweetness doing all the heavy lifting.

I first tasted proper Spanish croquetas decades ago in Barcelona and have been addicted ever since: two versions served up here hold their heads high with any of my previously sampled Iberian iterations. Both are housed in crisp-fried, crumbed casing that cracks to yield a molten lava flavour bomb. Chorizo and manchego nicely underplays the meat, allowing nutty caramel of the cheese to take the starring role, sharp, creamy aioli carrying pungent heft courtesy of smoked Drummond House garlic; more demure butterbean and hazelnut croquettes are equally pleasurable, served up with pleasingly sweet quince aioli.

At this point, in true tapas style, plates are arriving in flurries. Annascaul pork belly is quite divine, crisped pan-fried exterior sandwiching tender sweet meat and unctuous creamy fat; baby gem lettuce adds leavening green crunch as peanut and sesame elevate with perky, nutty notes.

Stuffed baby squid are tender and delicious little mouthfuls enclosing sweet confit pork mince and onion, in a sauce of squid ink and PX sherry; tiny, pickled tom berries (dwarf tomatoes) pop up as bright, little counterpoints.

The only problem with what would be an otherwise perfect dish is that it is absolutely swimming in the heavy black sauce, a noir-ish soup with little visual appeal, masking all other elements, a shame when you consider how much ‘tasting’ we do with our eyes. (It is scientifically established that the visual aspect of a dish can be responsible for up to 20% of our overall appreciation of its flavour.)

That same sauce is perfectly sound, a potent creation, but a fraction of it would have worked equally as well.

If that was the ugly sister, then octopus carpaccio is the belle of the ball, in both appearance and taste. Tender, toothsome, tangy octopus is dotted with immaculate musky shellfish aioli and the combined salinity, sweetness and umami of soy and yuzu resonate below like a depth charge.

There is also a very comforting Moroccan chickpea stew and, yes, there are patatas bravas and, yes, we do order them because you can never not order patatas bravas. These O’Connor’s spuds are deep fried to a crisp, crunchy, golden caramel, inside, floury and nearly sweet, then liberally smeared with aioli, but we are now cramming them into stuffed bellies like shady landlords housing foreign students, making room where there is none. That we somehow also squeeze in a sublime sea buckthorn sorbet is akin to renting out the hot press to a family of four but it really is that good. La Daughter has been the only one to show any restraint but always with a weather eye on the dessert menu and easily manages a cracking chocolate sponge.

A nod too to a smart little wine list, heavily skewed towards the Med, mostly Spanish or Italian, and a fruity Spanish oaked chardonnay (Aljibes, also from La Mancha, in Albacete) with notes of vanilla performs admirably.

It’s not our first time eating in Solas but chef Nicky Foley and his partner Ann Connell, who runs front of house, have really upped the standards.

The Iberian influences are authentic and rendered with aplomb, newer Asian notes skilfully and empathically deployed, mining deeper into flavour potential.

But what caps the edible offering is the firm commitment to sourcing the very best of local, seasonal produce, creating a fine and genuinely Irish take on tapas—round these parts, surely that qualifies as tapíní?

The Verdict

Food: 8.5

Service: 8

Value: 9

Atmosphere: 9

Tab: €234 (including two bottles of wine and soft drinks)