Pitt Bros BBQ.

*****Ammended at the end, to incorporate experience of visit no.2. Read on*****

It is Friday. It is lunchtime. You are close, tantalisingly close, to freedom. Stick your tongue out; taste it on the Dublin air. Giddiness is spreading throughout the capital. Ties are being loosened, hair is tumbling out of its clasp, makeup is smudged and flaking. But you're not quite there yet. There are a few more hours to wade through before your release back into the wild. Your blood is up. It is that cruel but welcome moment of relief: your lunchtime hour. How to pass the time? A rushed fridge-cold sandwich at the desk mindlessly scrolling through the Facebook newsfeed (again), or something a little more ... whetting? The five hungry ladies urge the latter. Make your Friday lunchtime your hors d'ouevre.
We took our own advice one bygone Friday. Our hair loosened, our stomachs rumbling, the famished five converged on George's street to try out one of the latest additions to Dublin's food scene: Pitt Bros BBQ.

What was it that drew us here?

It had something to do with this:


























(Can you spot one of our favourite words in bright red caps?)

And quite a bit to do with this, too.

Inside, the decor is black, white and orange: the palette of a child's hallowe'en bday party; if a little classier, a little more farmhouse chic. There were upended zinc milk pails for lampshades, an arty looking ceiling built of pallets (we mused vaguely if they were fully secure) and ceramic pigs, The Pitt Bros sacred idol, dotted about. Everything was clean, trendy and chilled, and then Kanye West started blaring from the speakers.
Music aside, the menu is impressive. It's all about the meat. And we five ladies, well, we like our meat.
Sadly, the ribs were off. The chef 'wasn't happy' with them, according to our eager waiter. We were crushed, but soldiered on.
Instead of ribs we opted for two servings of the brisket, pulled pork and one sausages. The meat order, as we were informed by our very communicative waiter, had gone awry and the sausages had come smaller than they should have been. The ladies figured that the kitchen must have neglected to adjust the cooking times to accommodate this mistake, as they came out quite tough and dry. The flavour was good, however: well-spiced, rich and meaty. The fat and water content was negligible, which made for a very rich bite.
The brisket was fine, but lacked seasoning. In fact, many of the dishes had us reaching for the salt: something that shouldn't be required at the end of a well-attended slow cook. The burnt end beans needed serious reducing. The tomatoes were still bitter and the onions far too visible and crunchy. They had clearly been neglected, and seemed to have been hastily cobbled together rather than been allowed to settle and melt into a hash of smokey glory. They, along with the brisket, would have benefitted enormously from more love; that is, dedication and time.
The pulled pork was delicious, however, and the saving grace of the table. The mash and gravy was so good we could have eaten a whole plate of it, and all the ladies agreed on this. The mac & cheese was well textured, but again it lacked a bit of pizzaz. The coleslaw was standard, the onion rings generous and tasty. We ate everything, of course, but were left hankering after ... something. We couldn't quite put our fingers on it. The added salt could not mask the unmistakeable flavour of rush, which, on a Friday lunchtime, is the last thing you want in your mouth.
Our servers were friendly, attentive and very eager to please. They kept up a running commentary of the restaurant's trials and tribulations, which had us wondering if this aforementioned tweet had more to do with a general lack of organisation among the Bros than with a surging demand for their wares, as we'd initially hoped. The staff wanted our feedback, though, and took all of our comments graciously on board. They are clearly very passionate about this enterprise, but despite their passion, they're not quite there yet.

The free ice-cream at the end of the meal was a nice touch, and softened the slightly bitter taste of disappointment we were left with. Being allowed to fill our own cones was great fun, and gave us the power to be as greedy as we wished. But it was only a band aid to cover the wound. The real issues go deeper. No amount of free ice-cream could make us forget that.

Our verdict? Time is a healer, Pitt Bros BBQ. Your heart's in the right place and you've got serious potential, but it'll take more than an hour on a Friday lunchtime to sort your problems out.

The Hungry Ladies Rating:  3 Hungry Ladies

HOWEVER, definite potential for a 4 once teething problems have been soothed.

*****UPDATE******

Upon our return to Pitt Bros, knowing the potential they had in them, we felt like we had entered a whole new world. As Aladdin would say. The ribs were in, thankfully, and melted gorgeously apart in our mouths. The slaw had been jazzed up with the addition of red cabbage and some sexy spices, and the burnt end beans had been cooked down, real slow, to a lovely brown, smokey mess. In short it was everything we had wanted first time around.

So Pitt Bros BBQ have now earned (drum roll please) 4 Hungry Ladies!!!

Let that be a lesson on the merits of passion and perseverance to all of us.

Fight Hanger.

You know the feeling. You waited too long to eat, and you're miffed. More than that: you're irritated. With each unappeased stomach rumble the irritation blooms into anger, but it's not any old anger. This is Hanger. Capital H for a reason. This is serious stuff.

You've been introduced to the Hungry Ladies over the last few posts, but you're yet to know, really know, the extent of their hunger, and by extension, their ever-threatening and very terrifying Hanger.

Before we go any further in our relationship, internet, we need to be totally honest with you. If this is going to progress, we have to wipe the cheese slate clean. Start from a fresh plaice. You need to know exactly who you're dealing with here.

We can be nasty. We can be downright despicable. We've been known to butt passersby out of the way in the street to get to a table. Plough through the restaurant queue. Pull hair (sometimes each others'). We even, we're ashamed to admit it, knocked down a granny once (or twice). Hangriness is a terrible affliction, and all five of us, unfortunately, have it.

If you can forgive us our occassional outbursts, our moments of human weakness, our salivating salaciousness, this 'thing' we've got going on here, will work out just fine. As long as you keep us well fed and watered, you'll know us only as the Hungry Ladies, as ever we are, however full and happy we may be. Keep your wits about you, though. Hungry can turn to Hangry in an instant. And, by God, you do not want to meet 5 Hangry Ladies, whomever you may be. Even if you're into that sort of thing.

But post-Hanger, we're adorable. Promise. Just like this puppy.

Yes, puppy, we all are. Truly. Now pass the burrito(s). Stat. There's a hulk inside us we need to keep down.

Incidentally, this picture gets 5 Hungry Ladies for cuteness on the Hungry Lady rating system.

Bunsen.

The five hungry ladies bemoaned the lack of a proper burger in Dublin for quite some time before Bunsen set up shop on Wexford street earlier this year. We tried GBK. We tried The Counter. We tried Jo'burger. GBK had disappointed us for some time. The Counter was fine. Jo-burger was a good concept, but failed to properly deliver on the important stuff; i.e. the thing itself. Then, we tried Bobo's. It rose to the top of the Burger heap immediately, but yet, we found something lacking. Having tasted the burger creations of Lucky Chip, MeatLiquor and MeatWagon, we could never be fully satisfied with what was on offer on our shores. Burger glory was, sadly, across the sea and out of reach. How were we to satisfy the gnawing urge inside of us, save lining Michael O'Leary's pockets more often than was wise?

Then, one of the ladies spotted this.

As if by magic we found ourselves seated in the sparse restaurant, staring down at the sparse little menu-slash-business card. The options? Hamburger, cheeseburger, fries. Double or single patty. Thick cut, sweet potato, or shoestring fries.
Everything about the place said economy. We all knew what we were there for, there was no time for frivolities. When our provisions arrived, and we took the first bites of our cheeseburgers (the hamburger didn't even come into it), we realised what we had been missing in the burgers of Dublin. Simplicity. Good meat, freshly ground and well seasoned. Good quality cheese, perfectly melted. A bun with the right amount of give and bite. Lettuce, onion, tomato. Ketchup, mustard, mayo. No fancy sauces. No Mexican or Asian twists. No gardens of rocket, no blue cheese. Not a slice of bacon in sight. There was so much this burger was potentially missing, and yet it felt perfect and complete. 

It's just as Confucius said, life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. Thank you, Bunsen, for bringing the burger back to basics, where it belongs.

Hungry Ladies Rating (An explanation of which can be found in our earlier post, here):

4 Hungry Ladies

Burgerlicious.

The Manifesto.

If only Martin Luther had stuck to the right sort of manifesto.

If only he had been born in another time, another place; he could have stayed away from religion, and Germany, and nailed his edict to the door of a little holy house in Rathmines village and feasted on something far better than a diet of worms for the rest of his days.
This holy house is the Manifesto, a small and unassuming Italian establishment on the main street. The edict nailed to its door, had Martin been lucky enough to be born in its time, would read, Catucci-esque: You gotta eat here.
You'd be forgiven for not knowing about this gem, even if you're a local: the restaurant front is grubby and nondescript and more than one of the Hungry Ladies passed by it, heretically, without a second glance. But once you're inside - oh - it really is divine. As soon as we'd passed the threshold, we were greeted by the balm of the wood burning oven, which continually churns out homemade bread and pizza. Once you're seated - should you be able to get a seat, that is - and have managed to whittle down your order - very difficult with the variety of salacious dishes on offer - you're rewarded for all your hard work with a basket of freshly baked, salted bread bites, warm from the oven. Try and make these last until your starters arrive. Try, and fail.

Of the starters we would strongly recommend the gnochetti: creamy and moreish with a wonderful bite, and none of the heavy earth taste you'd expect from a dish with beetroot in the title. The tiger prawns with orange and avocado and the scallops with spinach and passion fruit are also worth a mention, as is everything else we tried on the menu.
For mains, we opted for a mix of pizza and pasta; le nostre carni will have to wait for our next visit.

Manifesto have two award winning pizzas on their menu: Mamy (Gold medal award for best pizza in the WORLD, 2006) and Don Corleone (best pizza in Ireland, 2011). We opted for one of each, and were not disappointed. Of the homemade pasta, we ordered the ragu, which was delicious, even if the meat was a little chunkier than what we had been hoping for, and the seafood scialatiello, which was devoured in a hallowed silence. We also tried the ndunderi, a medieval dish similar to gnocchi, with ricotta cheese and a prawn and jerusalem artichoke sauce. Thank you, Manifesto, for bringing this one back from the Middle Ages. To wash it down we had the house red, a very drinkable wine that comes in a bottle labelled with the neat Manifesto logo. Altar wine, it was not.
We were too full for dessert, which is rare amongst the Hungry Ladies, but with the bread baskets and generous portions, we had to admit a satisfied defeat.

So, should you bother? There are more Italian restaurants in Dublin than there are Christian denominations; is this, I hear you ask, the one worth parting with your cash for? To that we answer, louder than a Magdalene congregation, yes. Your money might not be able to buy you a place in the afterlife these days, but it can guarantee you a few rapturous moments in the new church of the Five Hungry Ladies.
Join us. Pull up a pew. With one bite, we swear you'll be converted.

Five Hungry Ladies rating:

A quick explanation of The Hungry Ladies rating system, as this is the first.
There are five ladies in the group. Each of us cast a something/5 vote after a meal, and the votes are totted up and averaged, in the interests of democracy and fairness.
The final vote is measured in Hungry Ladies:

1 Hungry Lady: Eat here only if you absolutely have to.
2 Hungry Ladies: You can eat here if you want, but don't say we didn't warn you.
3 Hungry Ladies: Eat here, sure, but don't expect miracles.
4 Hungry Ladies: You really should eat here.
5 Hungry Ladies: YOU GOTTA EAT HERE.

The Five Hungry Ladies rating for MANIFESTO:

5 HUNGRY LADIES

Yep, we went there. 5 out of 5 on the first review. Trust us, it's worth it.

Welcome to our table.

Welcome to the table of the Five Hungry Ladies. Take a seat. We're going to take you on a culinary adventure through the streets of our dirty aul town, Dublin.

A great food culture has sprung up in the Irish capital over the past couple of decades, and in the last few years, especially, Dubliners have seen the tone of new eateries change from would-be and actual Michelin style restaurants, predictable pub diners and well-known international fast-food chains, to unique, rough-around-the-edges hipster hubs with a more streamlined, focused menu. The most successful of these tend to turn the spotlight on one dish and, through passion and obsession, hone it into a sublime eating experience, without pressing too heavily on the average wallet. Posh grub and pub grub still hold court on the two opposing ends of the Irish foodie spectrum, but many more shades are emerging in between the two. This new 'indoor street food' style restaurant is a nod to the kind of establishments that wouldn't be out of place in New York and London; a likely by-product of our emigrant culture. Us five gals, well, we're starving, so you can take us anywhere ... as long as the food is up to our, rather discerning, standards. 

We are five ladies who like to talk about food. We like to think about it, often, to dream about it, and, happily, to eat it. A lot. Our manifesto for Five Hungry Ladies is to give an honest, democratic (five opinions distilled - with difficulty - into one) critique of everywhere we eat. And also to eat everywhere. We're basically trying conquer the city of Dublin one mouthful at a time. The first restaurant we're going to talk about is, funnily enough, Manifesto. 

So get comfortable in that seat of yours. Bring a cushion for your weary arse, because you may be hanging around for a while yet. Hungry? Don't worry, refreshments will be provided.