I spent two-and-a-half weeks of last month eating — and drinking — my way around Puglia, the paradise on Earth that comprises most of the heel of the Italian boot.
On my travels I ate many unfamiliar and wondrous things, the weirdest of which was probably a fish the locals call “scorfano”. I bought a pair of them, weighing about ½kg each, from a stall in the fish market in Gallipoli. I was looking for “triglie”or red mullet, but none had been landed. The English name for this bright scarlet, armour-plated denizen of the deep is scorpion fish, and for good reason — the spines are apparently toxic, although, mercifully, the poison is neutralised once the fish is rinsed and cooked.
To be sure, to be sure, I cut off the offending prongs before I stuffed the interior with chopped sage and oregano from our host’s garden and barbecued them. My adventurous nature was rewarded in spades. Delicious flavours abounded, the firm white flesh being a little like a softer-textured lobster. I discovered on my return that this is the fish the French call “rascasse”, of which chunks turn up in bouillabaisse on the Mediterranean coast.
At the same fish market I bought, on another day, fine native oysters — a dozen, shucked, for a euro a throw — with a free glass of rosado wine thrown in. Here I should maybe also mention that, returning to Dublin, I was laid low for four days by an iffy chicken leg, dished up at a barbecue. Stuff and fabric of a food critic’s life. Anyhow, once I had recovered, I set off on the trail of more unfamiliar tasting sensations, which is how I wound up at Klaw Poké, the latest piece in the jigsaw of the mercurial Niall Sabongi’s quest to bring accessible seafood to Dublin diners.
Poke is pronounced (approximately) “pok-eh”, Mancunian speak — think Liam Gallagher — for something tiny and claustrophobic. The Capel Street premises, although compact, avoids this stigmatisation by having a decent-sized window to the street, making the interior light and airy. The kitchen is semi-open plan. Seating is, by and large, communal. My friend Gloria and I did try to circumvent this by spreading our belongings about, but the ploy worked for only so long.
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The menu, on a blackboard, divides into two segments: one is the fish and shellfish familiar to those who have dined in Niall’s other eaterie, Klaw, in Temple Bar, while the other has dishes constructed around the “poke” concept.
As Niall explained it, poke, which means “cut and slice”, was the invention of Hawaiian fishermen, who, on their homeward journey, dined on fish enhanced with whatever ingredients they had to hand. The want of cooking facilities on the boats meant they ate the fish raw. The concept was enthusiastically adopted by the Japanese.
What you get when you order a poke bowl is a tripartite combination of fish, rice and other ingredients that help to put a dash of style and colour into what otherwise would be a monochrome dish. To aid the novice poke head, Niall has constructed the menu around preset options, although these can be made bespoke to taste.
Gloria and I took the mahi poke — chunks of tuna atop a bowl of tasty brown rice with nori seaweed, tiny, sweet edamame beans, samphire and picked ginger, topped with a ponzu dressing. We then added, on our own initiative, macadamia nuts and avocado.
The exercise is a bit like customising a new car and we both agreed that this was an excellent way to eat, being both tasty and healthy.
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Piggies that we are, though, we could not leave it there. Oysters were still fresh in my mind. How could I turn down an assorted plateful? And where the hell else can you get whole crab, brown meat and all, slathered with a sauce made with jerk spices? I had to have one of those.
The crowning glory was a piece of long ray, plainly cooked. Ray is one of our coastal waters’ finest fishes — mega-tasty and by no means difficult to eat as there are no bones. Cooked, the succulent flesh can be prised away from the cartilage with a fork. Normally, the only piece you get is the wings. Long ray, or the cut from either side of the backbone, is even tastier, but you seldom see it on a menu or on the fishmonger’s slab these days.
We drank beer with our seafood extravaganza — an engaging IPA called KIP, specially commissioned by Niall as a fish-friendly quaffer. There are a couple of simple desserts on the menu which, after all we had eaten, proved impossible to tackle. Our bill, including four beers, came to €88.
Niall Sabongi, the Sir Galahad of seafood, has a pedigree in making things accessible. His father, George, gave Dubliners access to craic and tolerable French-style food with his eponymous bistro in South Frederick Street, at a time when the capital was a greyer place than it is today. In defiance of the second generation’s tradition for getting the hell out of the hospitality industry, the young Niall went into the same line of work as his dad.
His personal holy grail of bringing seafood to Dublin’s dining public started with Rock Lobster, above Kielys in Donnybrook; thence to Harvey Nichols’s swanky box in Dundrum.
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Presumably, like other tyro restaurateurs, he had dreams of “onwards and upwards”, but, Michelin eat your heart out, a Damascene moment caused him to turn his back on fine dining. Klaw, providing lobster for the proletariat in simple surroundings, was the result. Klaw Poké has extended his scope and I believe there are further innovative developments in the pipeline. Personally, I cannot wait.
Scorpion fish, anyone?
KLAW POKÉ
159 CAPEL ST, DUBLIN 1
01 556 0117
FOOD Four stars
WINE Two and a half stars
SERVICE Three and a half stars
AMBIENCE Three stars
VALUE Four stars
OVERALL Three and a half stars