Vada

Stoneybatter is spoilt for quality restaurants, yet Vada has found its niche and filled it in style, under the steerage of Ballymaloe-trained owner Sarah Boland and chef Hannah O’Donnell (formerly sous chef at Kai in Galway for seven years). Together they steward a kitchen that makes the most of its carefully curated ingredients from fine local producers, and a dining room that feels like an intimate club. Located midway between Grangegorman’s TUD campus and Smithfield Square, this is a neighbourhood favourite worth travelling for.

Vada started life as a daytime café serving weekday lunch and weekend brunch menus with a large dose of originality and creativity: Ham Hock and Cheddar Croquette with free range poached eggs, Shepard’s Store cheddar, lovage hollandaise, house piccalilli and Abercorn Farm gherkins, perhaps, or Tuscan Toast with whipped Ardsallagh cheese ‘schmear’, toasted sourdough, Vada cannellini beans, free range fried egg and pepita pesto. Optional extras include Hugh Maguire’s superlative smoked black pudding and thick-cut candied bacon from Ethersons butchers.

It since evolved to replace those weekday lunches with weekend dinners, leaning into the supreme cosiness of the den-like corner space and into the opportunity to showcase natural and classic wines alongside their Epilogue coffee roasted in Wicklow and signature kombucha and kefir made in-house to utilise surplus fresh produce. A zero-waste approach to sustainability is as much a core philosophy here as considered provenance.

It tells you a lot about the kitchen that Epilogue coffee turns up as a riff throughout the various menus: the approach focuses on sourcing core ingredients well and then creating imaginative spins on how they could be used. Their coffee features in the Epilogue coffee chocolate ganache that meets torched brown sugar marshmallow, milk crumb and maple syrup in their brunch favourite of S’more Croissant French Toast. It might turn in a coffee hollandaise atop a flank steak from Higgins butchers at brunch, or in the seasoning for deep-fried chestnut mushrooms as one of the shareable snacks at dinner.

The dinner menu is made for sharing, starting with the likes of Maple marmite nuts or maybe Chipotle rosemary nuts, focaccia with whipped tahini butter or a burnt onion curd, or a ‘Picky bits plate’ with house crisps, dips and crudités.

Small plates might be seasonal delights like a colourful wintry panzanella salad of boldly pink, beautifully seared and perfectly tender venison with toasted bread, beetroot, raddichio and dried cranberry bringing a candied textural element, or spanking fresh picked crab sitting atop nduja toast with shaved fennel and fresh dill.

Large plates could be a generous piece of halibut, perfectly seared and served with cannellini beans, with an exceptional brown butter hollandaise and sweet melting braised leeks, or Andarl pork fillet with a silky bittersweet turnip puree, contrasting with the textured bite of a conference pear poached whole and finished with a deep rich jus.

Even the sides are a riot of contrasting texture and flavour, like the brilliant smashed new potatoes with a tangy pairing of Caesar dressing and Cais na Tire sheep cheese, or creamy sprout and cauliflower bake with made extra moreish with tangy Knockanore cheese.

Keep room for desserts like a polenta and almond orange cake with mascarpone very subtly flavoured with Teeling’s whiskey prettily finished with segmented blood oranges and an almond crumbs – and of course, an Epilogue coffee to finish.

The wine list is short but well focused, with lots of choice by the glass and lots of natural wine stars like Uivo Curtido (a Moscatel with light skin contact) and chilled reds like the organic Boogie Woogie from Aubert et Mathieu, alongside more conventional choices.

In short, this is the kind of vibrant, fun, creative and seasonal restaurant that every neighbourhood would love to have: lucky Stoneybatter.