They’re a very modest gang in the Etto and Uno Mas family and it’s probably what’s really working in their two establishments. The woman on the phone admitted things were going well. When I rang the week before, all we could get was a booking at the bar. Monday, a day when many restaurants don’t even open for dinner and this place was hopping. Just take a moment to regard that statement. I arrived to Uno Mas at 6.15 on a Monday night and it was rammed. Etto, and now Uno Mas, created a winning menu that is a riff on tapas for the more evolved among us and can also operate within the three-course dining structure. How many plates were we supposed to get? How do you know when the meal is over? The tapas anxiety is real. The whole pace of the meal was alien to us. We wanted to be chill and European about it but when the tapas trend washed up on our shore many of us were confused by this dismantling and reinvention of dinner plans. Owner-operators Liz Matthews and Simon Barrett astutely recognised and remedied a certain issue Irish people had had to date with the concept of tapas – namely a kind of unfocused anxiety regarding the portions. Every detail was considered in this neat, attractive package. When I did finally get in there, I was ready to hate it with all the bitterness of the traditional Irish begrudger but was immediately silenced by the flair of the kitchen, the confidence of the food and the sheer exacting professionalism of the whole operation. People were at once exasperated and wildly curious. It was rumoured that the restaurant had even disconnected the phone such was the high traffic it was receiving. I still worked in kitchens at the time and I seem to remember everyone from the front of house manager to my head chef to the suppliers talking about six-month waiting lists and queues out the door for spaces at the bar. For months, no one could get a table in the small, apparently unassuming dining room on Merrion Row. Some may remember the opening of Etto – sister restaurant to the new kid on the block, Uno Mas – was lore in the Dublin restaurant scene.
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