Restaurant Review: Dublin's Ely is wine-bar dining with pure flair and verve

I like being wrong. I find it invigorating to have a belief overturned, a presumption dismissed, an attitude reversed. It makes me feel young again — back when I thought I knew everything but was constantly reminded I knew nothing.

Ely Wine Bar was opened by Michelle and Erik Robson in 1999, 25 years ago this year. Before the millennium, before 9/11 and Ireland’s boom and bust, when Cru Classé Claret was affordable and before pet-nats or natural wines were a thing.

I’ve visited Ely every year since 1999 but somehow I had a rather fixed idea of what the food was like. I thought of cheese and salami plates and steaks — I knew that the sourcing was good but I wasn’t expecting to find the food thrilling, creative and verging on the exhilarating.

I visited Ely on a quiet Tuesday and for extra perspective, I invited two people that were toddlers when Ely opened — Shamim de Brún and Sian Conway, a duo that burst into the Irish food world just a year or two ago reviewing everything from spice bags to chicken rolls with charm and wit.

Watch for their upcoming Spitfire podcast and give them a follow on Instagram — they are the future.

Of course I found them in the best seat (at the back in the corner) sipping cocktails — a classic margarita and a spicy coconut margarita (€14). Both were artfully made, balanced and delicious. For fear of not keeping pace with their younger constitutions, I eschewed a cocktail and ordered a salty, lemony Valdespino Manzanilla, a mere €6 for a generous copita.

Ely’s menu includes snacks, small and big plates and sides designed for nibbling with a glass of wine, plus options for a full meal. We began with Ely’s sourdough, ‘house cured’ trout, a celeriac espuma and lamb croquettes (all €14) and from the mere sight of the plates I realised just how much I had underestimated the food offering in Ely.

To begin with, the sourdough was as fine as I’ve tasted. Nutty and complex and with a bright green whipped wild garlic butter that settled pleasingly into the alveoli hollows in the crusty toasted bread. For divilment, we ate the starters in the wrong order beginning with the sweet lamb croquettes that somehow managed to be densely textured and pleasingly light, a fine smoky-sweet romesco sauce nestled underneath and worked as an excellent dipping sauce (I used my finger once the bread was gone).

Celeriac espuma was a sort of fluffy whipped soup (Sian’s description), ethereal and earthy, sweet and creamy with a tang from some 24-month Comté and some crunchy pecans and jewels of pomegranate to add sweetness.

Cured trout (plus roe) in a lime and fennel citrus-focused aguachile marinade was meaty and juicy and refreshed our palates nicely. It worked well with my Manzanilla (as did all the starters), but also with a glass of Alta Alella ‘Mirgin’ Cava Gran Reserva (€10). Perhaps the best match for our starters however was Sham’s glass of dry Fernando de Castilla Oloroso (€9).

Roast Irish cauliflower came with a pumpkin dukkah and was coated in a lemongrass barbecue sauce that managed to be both smoky and meaty while retaining a lightness of touch — one of the best cauliflower dishes I’ve had in the last decade.

Irish lamb saddle came with a Merguez sausage (next time can I have 5 please!), plus a carrot and ginger purée and baby ratte potatoes. The lamb was properly pink and immaculately cooked, perhaps 10 seconds less and it would have been a touch underdone. An olive and pomegranate salsa elevated the lamb into fine dining territory.

Home cut chips were properly crispy and tasty but polenta chips stole the show, things of beauty to look at, a perfect crisp crust, a sweet fluffy centre and a sprinkle of rosemary to add a herbal note — perfection.

Ely’s wine list is of course diverse and excellent and we dithered between classic and modern options but settled on Niepoort’s Portuguese Nat’Cool red, a lightly funky natural red that lifted our spirits as well as the flavours in our meal (€49 for 1 litre).

For dessert (€9.50 each), a lemon and ginger posset was tangy and refreshing and a light hazelnut praline in an amaretto crumb elegant and moreish. The only bum note was some rather odd brunch music on the Tannoy (eg Wham’s Club Tropicana), but that is a minor criticism.

Ely’s head chef Luca Rocco is cooking with flair, intelligence and verve and you should visit soon.

THE VERDICT:

• Food: 9/10
• Drink: 9/10
• Service: 8/10
• Ambience: 8/10
• Value: 8.5/10