It’s a bit of an odd spot, the Neighbourhood Sort-Of Known As The International Financial Services Centre, or NSOKATIFSC for short.
For a start, its boundaries appear to be as vague and unspecified as the unobtrusive global transactions that go on behind the myriad brass-plated doors located in the vicinity. It (obviously) encompasses the actual jigsaw of glass-fronted blocks of IFSC House on Custom House Quay. But then it meanders parallel to the northside docks down to the BFKATPD (Building Formerly Known As The Point Depot), before miraculously wandering across the Liffey like a pinstripe-suited Jesus and gathers the docks of Spencer and Grand Canal unto its double-breasted bosom.
Doubtless when the wheeze of creating a low-tax financial zone in the heart of the capital was first floated in the 1980s by various business and political poobahs — championed by Charlie Haughey who fell upon the scheme with the eagerness of a starving hound on a meaty bone, making it a centrepiece of Fianna Fail’s 1987 election manifesto — they had a definite vision in mind.
Perhaps they envisaged an exclusive enclave of soaring skyscrapers lining the mouth of the river, stuffed to the rooftop helipads with busy bankers. A (tax) haven with lofty penthouses, bijou boutiques and chi-chi eating-houses. A token sawdust-and-diddley-eye pub for visiting masters of the universe to experience Real Oireland in between dangling obnoxious CfDs before wide-eyed nouveau riche natives.
Of course, this being Ireland, there was zero chance that such a shining city of pillocks would ever fully materialise. Grand construction schemes never proceed in a linear/timely/orderly fashion (ask any minister for housing or health) for all manner of reasons, from greed to incompetence, apathy, political rows, council chicanery, red tape and recessions.
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Instead the mouth of Dublin Bay — the north quay in particular — continues to develop in a snaggletoothed fashion. The financial crash meant the permanent flock of cranes vanished from the skyline for several years; the skeletal husk of what was to be the glittering apogee of Anglo Irish Bank’s hubris was eventually turned from karmic eyesore into the headquarters of the Central Bank, which, remarkably, isn’t encircled by ravens.
But the NSOKATIFSC doesn’t really have a people-centred centre. There’s a modicum of night-time activity around the CHQ complex, but the long straight spear of Mayor Street that slices through the locale isn’t the first thoroughfare which springs to mind when planning to eat out.
“What about drunken fish?” suggested my dining companero. I reckoned that so long as they get their round in and know a few songs, I didn’t mind them at all.
My bad. Drunken Fish is a Korean restaurant situated along the hotchpotch of old and new architecture along Mayor Street. With the delights of indoor dining still a week or so into the future, its lively two-storey bar-restaurant was empty, but it has fashioned a good-sized outdoor seating area along the pavement. Luckily, it is also next to a spacious plaza and as new customers arrived, extra tables and chairs of all shapes and styles were briskly set up with room for all.
As we studied the extensive menu, which includes kopas (Korean tapas), bento boxes, bibimbap (rice bowls), noodle soups and bulgogi (Korean barbecue), the friendly waiter waited. We dithered. “Have you eaten kimchi?” he asked. “Not in Ireland,” said companero, not showing off at all. The waiter vanished briefly, reappearing with a bowl of delicious rubied shreds of fermented cabbage, accompanied by two shot glasses of soju, a perilously smooth distilled Korean spirit.
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We tucked in. This was a propitious start for two lifelong cabbage-dodgers. But then I did a daft thing. I had intended to order a noodle broth, fancying a bunfight of seafood and vegetables, but at the last second switched to a bento box, only copping afterwards that companero had done likewise. Gah. Has there ever been such a bungling food reviewer?
I studied the waiter’s notepad as he jotted down our order. The page was filled with Korean characters — Ronan, a Dubliner, explained he had spent a year in Korea teaching English to children.
For starters we shared haemul pajeon and saeu sogeum gui; the first a lightly crisp pancake-meets-tortilla with a dense, flavoursome filling of egg, scallions and chunks of fish; the second a quintet of delicately grilled and spiced perfectly fresh prawns on a bed of Korean bay salt, each to be dipped in a bowl of sweet cream sauce.
Our bento boxes, one of pork (dosirak jeyuk) and one of spicy braised chicken (dosirak dak galbi), were a brumotactillophobe’s delight, a tray of five separate square bowls, each heaped with fluffy white rice, portions of spicy vegetables and kimchi and hillocks of lean tender pork and cubes of chicken and sweet potato tumbled in chilli paste.
There was a satisfying balance to the dishes, a careful calibration of food groups that leaves the diner pleasantly, rather than heavily, full. The ingredients were fresh and the combinations harmonious.
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It was a beautiful evening. The last fingers of a warm sun slanted down the canyon of Mayor Street, casting a Manhattan-shaped shadow. A couple of hardy boys sat on a low wall near by drinking pints as their dog heroically chased seagulls. Grown-ups and kids bustled to and from surrounding apartment blocks. Outside the restaurant — one of the relatively few eating-houses along this old-new thoroughfare — a happy babble of chat rose from diners over the sizzle of grilling beef, bulgogi clearly being the go-to dish.
Maybe there is a heart in the NSOKATIFSC after all.
Drunken Fish felt like a buzzy, relaxed neighbourhood restaurant in a place that really isn’t like any other Dublin neighbourhood. I looked up. Our table was under a compact canopy of trees. Had I ever dined out beneath a bower in a city centre? Not in Ireland, more’s the pity.
Drunken Fish
The Excise Building, Mayor Street Lower, North Dock, Dublin 1
What we ate
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To Start
Haemul pa jeon €6.90
Saewoo sogeum gui €7.95
Mains
Dosirak jeyuk €13.90
Dosirak dak galbi €13.90
To drink
3 bottles of beer €18
Total: €60.65
Summary
Authentic, reasonably priced Korean food with friendly service and a buzzy atmosphere.
