Review: the student-food revolution starts here

Perhaps it’s punishment for asking for our vegan pizza to include cheese, but the food gods are frowning on my friend. We try for dessert, but the nice waiter says the chefs have gone home. It’s the second time this has happened to us. My friend is to this column’s dessert experience what Donald Trump is to informed, articulate debate. “Maybe the universe is trying to tell me something,” she says.

Our booth has caging around three sides, to replicate the industrial feel of something trendy: battery hen, cage fighter, impounded stray?

Until the dessert jinx she’s had nothing but success, winkling out the back story of BoCo Bar + Oven, a pizza restaurant on Bolton Street in Dublin. By the time I get here she’s installed in a cage and has the history of the place. Well, not a cage, exactly, but a booth with wire caging around three sides, to replicate the industrial feel of something trendy: battery hen, cage fighter, impounded stray?

More bare brick than you could shake a breadstick at

BoCo is in a handsome corner building that sits almost directly opposite the college that produces the country’s crop of engineers and quantity surveyors. Insert favourite “how many engineers does it take to make a pizza?” joke here. Before it became BoCo it was Bodkins, which had a Mexican restaurant in one half and a pub in the other – but, as they told my friend, you couldn’t drink in the restaurant or eat in the pub.

So they decided to marry both activities under one roof, shipped in a French wood-fired pizza oven and gutted the place to make way for a paint-by-numbers industrial-hipsterville look. There are concrete floors, corrugated zinc panelling, those cages and more bare brick than you could shake a breadstick at. It works because this building has the bone structure to carry it off.

It's my second visit. The first was so rushed we had to box up the (excellent) pizza and tear off to the Light House Cinema to catch a screening of Ken Wardrop's The Piano Lesson. The film should be on general release later this year. Go see. It is a joy and a gem.

All the time – and space – in the world

Tonight we feel we have all the time in the world – and, as it’s not term time, all the space in the world. The engineers have gone wherever engineers go, so this place is emptier than my LinkedIn page. And it shouldn’t be. Because the pizza is very good. Not quite as good as it was on my first visit, when the paper-crisp crust was dusted in polenta and piled with good ingredients, but good.

“Wood-fired” buffalo wings are all spice and no smoke, but they come with a made-from-scratch creamy blue-cheese dip and make a nice start to things. The pizzas, like our vegan (with cheese) tomato, mushroom and caramelised-onion one – are typical of the “artisan” approach, which can put pizza in a whole new price bracket. It all starts with good dough and high heat, preferably fired by wood. (There’s a woodpile here, in the pub, just in case you missed that detail.)

The prosciutto on my artichoke and buffalo-mozzarella pizza is silk rather than leather, the kind of ham that melds to your tongue. It’s been added after the pizza came out of the oven, along with a fistful of rocket.

Turn your pizza upside down. If some or all of the toppings fall off you're in artisan country

It defines the simple test of how to know if your pizza is artisan. Turn it upside down. If some or all of the toppings fall off you’re in artisan country. If it has all been baked into one molten chunk then not so much.

Alongside the pizzas, a rocket-and-spinach salad, with a blizzard of Parmesan chunks, is fine, but it’s a lot of greenery with a dressing that seems to be little more than a squeeze of lemon juice.

Several notches above most student pubs

There’s the feeling of a slight dip since my last visit, but it is later in the evening on a quiet midweek night. Even so, the standard is still several notches higher than you’ll find in most student pubs.

I’d love to tell you dessert was stellar, but that was not to be. One of the options is a sharing plate of smashed chocolate that I’m pretty sure we could have knocked up ourselves given the chance.

But BoCo is good. They’ve got a lot of things right. Like the students it’s aimed at, it’s at its best in term time and earlier in the evening.

Dinner for two with two glasses of wine (and no dessert) came to €52.

BoCo, 57 Bolton Street, Dublin 1, 01-8730128, facebook.com/bocodublin
Music: Good
Food provenance: None
Facilities: Fine
Wheelchair access: Yes
Vegetarian options: Good
Verdict: 7/10. Shaping up nicely to be a reason to visit Bolton Street

SECOND HELPING

We wandered into Sullivan's Country Grocer, in Oughterard, in search of some fruit, then got the smell of baking and the sight of its custard tarts. Just one was left, still warm from the oven. They sell almost as soon as they hit the display, like the proverbial hot cakes. Sullivan's has a small oven so can bake only one tray at a time. A Co Galway village is not the place I expected to eat the best custard tart of my life, but so it was. We stopped on the way home, too, for more, along with lovely goodies from the well-stocked shelves. It's a mother-and-son operation, according to its Facebook page. She runs the grocery, he bakes.
Sullivan's Country Grocer, Oughterard, Co Galway, 091-866522, facebook.com/sullivangrocer