Bang
Address: 11 Merrion Row, Dublin 2, D02 KW61
Telephone: 01-4004229
Cuisine: Iberian
Website: https://www.bangrestaurant.com/Opens in new window
Cost: €€€
An amuse-bouche can sometimes do a restaurant a disservice, tempting the palate so thoroughly that there is nowhere left to go. It can be a risky strategy to lead with your best shot. More dangerous, perhaps, is a sneak attack. A bite served on bread. I mean, Lissadell cockles escabeche with fresh cheese (two pieces, €12) looks harmless on paper.
Until you taste it. Cool cream cheese is piled on crystal bread, layered with onions, sweet and rich, and topped with dainty cockles that bring a precise edge of vinegar. There is a deep savouriness running through the bite, an umami note that takes a moment to place.
I extract the secret from a member of the floor staff. A combination of professional courtesy and basic self-preservation prevents me from repeating it here. Secrets of Fatima and all that.
This is Bang on Merrion Row, reopened with the Kicky’s duo in charge – Eric Matthews in the kitchen, Richie Barrett running front of house. The restaurant still runs across two levels. Upstairs, the mezzanine is lighter, with a semi-open kitchen, bar stools and standard tables. Downstairs is moodier. Light pools against terracotta walls, red wallpaper with a fine raised dot, and a wooden chequerboard wall shot through with muted gold. Shelves hold ceramics and album covers, from Bowie to Meatloaf. Deep banquettes line the room, upholstered in a soft, dark brown. It’s a room you settle into quickly, and you stay longer than planned.
Bang interior 
Bang interior 
Interiors at Bang
What’s striking is how Iberian the menu is, and how little it relies on the obvious markers. There are no gildas here, which tells you something immediately, but there is jamón, croquettes, tortilla, and meat and fish cooked over fire.
The wines are chosen to sit with the food rather than talk over it. Sommelier Victor Baquero guides us through a modern, Iberian-focused list. Most bottles sit in the €55-€75 range, justified by the calibre of producers – Rafael Palacios, Comando G, Filipa Pato. A Dominio de Tares Mencía (€60) from Bierzo proves an excellent match.
Next, the skin arrives bronzed and taut from the grill, the flesh beneath just yielding. It’s fideuà with red mullet (€14), the fish almost lacquered, staying moist enough to flake. The tomato-based sauce underneath clings to the short lengths of pasta, playing the role rice usually would, glossy and warm in colour, lifted with espelette pepper and, I suspect, a good chunk of butter, but it stops short of the overworked bisque depth that so often dulls dishes like this. There’s a restraint here, honed in Michelin-starred kitchens.
There’s also a quiet confidence running through this menu, a sense that it doesn’t need to prove its Iberian credentials. Cal Pep in Barcelona is one of the names referenced, and I remember well the gravelly voice of Josep Manubens Figueres as he sent out plate after plate of seafood, his tortilla arriving somewhere in the middle of it all. Matthews’s Irish version appears here as tortilla “Cal Pep” (€14.50), with Gubbeen chorizo folded through in place of jamón. It’s richer, more pronounced, the chorizo pushing forward, but the alioli slicked across the top reins it back into line.
Bang’s Ibérico Pork Secreto 
Bang’s Tortilla Cal Pep, Gubbeen chorizo 
Fideuà, Casteltownbere shrimp, alioli at Bang
The morcilla (black pudding, €16) is made in-house with bomba rice, which gives it a crumbly, almost friable texture. Borlotti beans and quince bring a comforting quality, but it’s the 10-year-old sherry vinegar sauce that holds the dish together, the acidity arriving late in the bite, lifting the beans and stopping it all from collapsing into starch and stodginess.
We order the half piri piri chicken from Ring’s Farm (€24), from the “over fire” section. Treacle-dark skin, crisp with piri piri glaze, enrobes flesh that is juicy and full of flavour. Ballymakenny Markies potato “bravas” (€7) are crisp-edged and laced with alioli and paprika sauce.
Dessert is an 82 per cent chocolate mousse sitting in jamón Ibérico fat caramel (€12). It is topped with a hazelnut tuille, smashed tableside before Pedro Ximénez is poured over. The sweetness that follows masks the savoury note that makes the idea interesting. Far better to be unashamedly challenging, and perhaps polarising. Nuno Mendes took the opposite approach at Lisboeta with his egg yolk and pork fat custard, and it was braver for it because it committed.
This isn’t a nostalgic tapas exercise or a greatest-hits Iberian menu. Matthews’s cooking shows creativity disciplined by experience, with service and wine to match. Bang feels like a restaurant that has stopped trying to impress and started concentrating, which is when things get interesting.
Dinner for two with a bottle of wine was €152.50.
The verdict A confident menu, serious wine list and a room built for lingering.
Food provenance Peter Hannan, Glenmar, Wrights of Marino, Ballymakenny, Artisan Foods.
Vegetarian options Winter leek with smoked Ballylisk and watermelon radish; roast sweetheart cabbage with lentils and delica pumpkin.
Wheelchair access No accessible room or toilet.
Music Low level, La Brigida Orquesta with Ana Tijoux, hip hop and rap.