Gaffe

What’s the story with Gaffe?

We arrive for Sunday lunch to the classic sight of a city in flux. To the tune of Svaneborg Kardyo, some flavour of football flashing down from the walls, an American visitor has just stood a regular a pint. He does not appear to need it. Warily but not without affection, the bar staff watch on as he offers a hug in return. You’d expect less soft Swedish electronica than Temple Bar trad to score such a scene, but even in gentrification, this corner of Portobello is humming its own tune.

Flash back fifteen years or so and Leonard’s Corner was a cluster of darkened pubs and greasy spoons, places you fell out of and into. Glow-ups came like the bankruptcy we were crawling out of - gradually and then suddenly. 57 The Headline brought craft beer and Sunday roasts in 2013; Bastible brought fine dining in 2015, before a Michelin star followed in 2022; now here come The Libertine and new residency Gaffe in Leonard's Corner’s' namesake bar, with two distinct twists on classic pub grub on opposite sides of the road. The Libertine's flash fitout boasts smoked cheese croquettes and tuna tartare. Gaffe’s window beckons you in for a burger.

Should we be booking?

We don’t for our first Friday visit and snag an early evening walk-in; for that Sunday second, a 3pm sitting is all that’s going a week in advance. Word’s getting out that the tall man crouched in the small kitchen back there is doing something special. The six tables snuggly fit into a back area they’ve set aside for Gaffe fill up fast, so best to book in for busier times. Bar and back counter space are ideal for solo and duo drop-ins - if you’re peckish in the vicinity, it’s well worth chancing your arm.

Who’s the tall man?

That’ll be Dan Chambers, a Yorkshire chef who punctuated his years at kitchens in Utrecht and London with popups across Europe. He doubled down last summer and traded in a gig leading London’s Bambi for a cross-continental string of supper clubs and residencies from Brussels to Bangkok. That’s a lot of fast-paced recipe development just landed down at Leonard’s.

What can we expect?

Fittingly for a project honed of itchy feet and varied facilities, the menu’s a moveable feast - dishes tweaked, tailored, tossed entirely as seasons and circumstances dictate. Don’t be distraught if you see something online that doesn’t show up on the day.

Though you won’t likely be, with swap-outs like these - we forgot all fantasies of a now-gone ham hock terrine on first sight of merguez (€11) snuggled up against a pile of peas and coco de paimpol, all glistening like pearls plumbed from the deep. They’re just as precious, holding firm to first bite until yielding to a satisfying pop of pleasure. Casablanca had it wrong – a hill of beans amounts to a lot when it looks like this.

We were so taken with them we’d hardly touched the merguez – good thing as the apologetic late arrival of a side of pickled chilli saved the slight-spiced, fat-saturated lamb sausage from feeling too rich.

We couldn’t but wonder if something was similarly missing from the soft shell crab (€10). For all the floods of sea salt flavour gushing out of the trout roe, light lemon yogurt and barely charred corn left the sweet meat too little to play off to really register.

No such trouble for the squid (€20), whose leek and butter bean base we’d drink even without the braised rings and pickled mussels. This classic cassoulet blanc gets sublime sweetness from soft-sweated leeks, lush against the just-right bite of the beans and the gentle crunch of pickled celery. This is a treat of well thought-out texture, all emphasising the squid’s stewed softness – it’s the best we’ve had around here in an age. Bread (€4, not made in-house) might be wise for mopping - our fingers did just fine.

“Psst… Try the burger. Trust us.” Trust them. Not for nothing is this the one dish that reliably lands for lunch and dinner every week – it’s the kind of plate that could never leave, would never be allowed to. We came dangerously close to ordering it both times. The chonky quarter pounder (€15) is slapped on a bumper bed of sliced pickles – no meagre coins here – and slathered in melted cheese and house sauce with a sharpness the fatty patty demands. A lightly-toasted bun comes as a reminder that, yes, hard surfaces do still exist. The table is one. Grab it. Hold on tight to keep from falling to the floor.

Sides sing. A baby gem salad delights the way mere leaves are rarely allowed to, ice-crisped curls cupping a dressing that's intense in all the right ways - a flash fire doused with a pail of water. Alternated with bites of the burger it's like coming up for air. Crispy spuds show the under-explored potential of new potatoes. More often steamed or smoked, they're roasted here to a fudgy texture we couldn't get enough of.

Only by figs (€7) were we left a little wanting – sat in a pat of caramelised white chocolate, sprinkled with a scatter of sweet hazelnuts halves, they’re the over-stretched star of a show they can’t carry, the red-ripe colour of the season’s best specimens nowhere in sight. This would have worked a treat with finer fruit.

Is Sunday lunch any different?

Not as much as we’d like, nor as might make for a destination experience. When the former 57 The Headline shut up shop and sold to the folks behind the Libertine, it left a gap in the market for a great Sunday roast – one the new site has only half-embraced with a pair of sharing plates. That leaves an open goal for Gaffe and one a little more time and testing might well see scored.

Meaty depth from roasting juices in the half chicken’s (€22) honey-mustard couldn’t quite compensate for under-crisp skin or flabby fat layers – with city centre competitors like Caribou and The Legal Eagle offering better with all the trimmings for €25 they’ll need to step this up.

Plaice (€22) proved a bigger problem, with under-salted skin leaving the toagarashi topping too great a weight to carry, for all its zesty character. Green peppercorn butter had much more of the former than latter – unevenly flavoured forkfuls are almost impossible to avoid.

Maybe all that was with sugar snap and samphire side salad (€5) in mind, but by the time we got there the sea veg, and all salty succour we could imagine it brought, was no more. The sharp citric kick of preserved lemon alone didn’t quite do it.

Simple lemon sorbet (€7) gave much better balance and a proper palate cleansing. Slim slivers of crisp apple showed all the fruit intensity we missed in the figs (since dropped) – when they get it right here, they really do. We've no doubt of better Sundays to come.

Anything decent to drink?

A bit better beer selection on tap than most other pubs in the area, but limited wine pours that aren’t about to excite you. Canned beers and cocktails show a bit more of a sense of adventure. What with Chambers’ wine bar pedigree we’d be keen to see a little more of an offering develop in that department to add to the food, but it’s early days yet.

How was the service?

Initial pleas for patience as Chambers ran the show solo in his opening weeks – doing the dishes and all – have ceded to more of a public pitch now that a kitchen porter’s in place. They seemed to take the eventual full house on our first Friday visit in their stride. Sensible spacing they can flex helps there, with more or fewer tables dedicated to food service as kitchen capacity allows – another thing that makes this a great call for walk-ins if you don’t mind risking a wait.

Will we rack up a bill?

Not without leaning a lot more on the bar than the table. Keep it quick with a burger and side and you’ll be about as satisfied as can be for a clean €20. Double-down for a three-course Sunday spectacular and you’ll still make out with change from a €50 – and a real pain in the gut first thing Monday morning.

What’s the final verdict on Gaffe?

You can see all of Dublin’s past and present packed around Leonard’s Corner - Victorian pubs and Georgian homes; Algerian coffee and Ukrainian cakes; mushroom butchers and master bakers. Across the road they’ve gone back to the future with a glittering restoration and a menu to match it. Here it’s simpler stuff, but no less special. This is smart seasonal cooking with a real sense of restless invention. We'll be back again to see where time takes it.