Recently there's a well worn path along the canal from my house to this south side foodie enclave. The latest endeavour which has me making the trek is Salt Lick a themed restaurant and BYOC enterprise.
Hobart's Cafe by day the place transforms on Friday and Saturday nights into a funky laid back eatery. Well that's the idea, the hip playlist and romantic candles can only go so far, the place still feels a bit like a cafe. But while the interiors may not scream cool the menu certainly does!
My rhubarb with citrus and cardamon punch. They suggest rum but it was good with vodka!
They work on a "bring your own" concept and this extends to their cocktails. My plan was to grab a range of naggins and sample a variety of their cocktails. Unfortunately Dublin is very poorly stocked when it comes to smaller bottles of anything other than mainstream. We ended up with a bottle of Absolut but it worked out pretty well; the daiquiris in particular were very nice! If you have a well stocked drinks cabinet I'd definitely advise bringing a selection to test the mixologist with!
A starter of avocado, beetroot. pickled fennel and feta cheese.
We tried both of the starters on offer, mine was an avocado purée with beetroot, fennel and feta salad. It was a lovely light and summery affair with delicate flavours and good textures. I absolutely adore avocado and rather than scrap my knife noisily across the slate platter it seemed more socially acceptable to mop up the last remnants of it with my fingers, no way was I giving this up!
His - naughty but nice - deep fried bacon.
His deep fried bacon came with three dips, beetroot syrup, ginger beer glaze and srirachi aioli. It was a small portion, thankfully, I'm pretty certain that deep fried bacon fat is a bit of a no-no! Like all things that are bad for you though it was delicious. The lovely chunks of bacon were very tender and juicy and worked well with the accompanying dips
Three taco platter.
My favourite, lamb belly with cannellini bean, parmesan and olive mash topped with feta cheese.
All main courses come with fries and very peppery rocket and parmesan salad.
It's taco month at Salt Lick and with three to choose form it seemed pretty obvious to have one of each. My favorite was definitely the lamb, it was a very tender cut and I could have eaten a whole dish of the bean, parmesan and olive mash it came with. The pork was delish too and while I loved the flavor of the beef the accompanying capers were so salty that I couldn't eat them, once the offenders were removed, it was quite palatable!
Bread and dips, possibly as naughty as the deep fried bacon!
Of course I should have stopped there, but did I? No! I'm a fiend for bread and when I noticed it was on offer, fried with sugar, I had to have some! It was an interesting sort of hotchpotch dessert, I liked all the components, especially the sugary, buttery bread, but I'm not sure if they all really gel together. I wonder if there was a fruit element would it work better.
Himself settled on a coffee and a very tasty brownie with hints of orange.
Overall we had a really fun and original night. It was Salt Lick's second night open to the public so I can only imagine things will get bigger and better from here on for them. Personally I can't wait to see what next month's theme is! I'll have to work on my liquor selection before then!
