Uno Mas

Peppers blistering at the pass

Padrón peppers blister at the pass at Uno Mas in Dublin, where the grill sets the order of the meal. The house works through an unnamed brigade, one shaped by the Etto team and by the habits that made that earlier room matter in Dublin: a short menu, a serious cellar, food that arrives for sharing rather than ceremony. Liz Matthews and Simon Barrett are part of the founding Etto team behind it, carrying the model from Italian-leaning restraint into Spanish and Mediterranean cooking on Aungier Street. The lineage here is not presented as a single chef’s autobiography. It sits in the way the kitchen edits. Four starters, four mains, tapas around them, and a table that orders across the meal and lets the meal build by hand. Jamón Ibérico Paleta, gilda skewers, anchovies in ajo blanco, grilled squid à la plancha, salt-aged Delmonico steak for two, flan de queso. The discipline is a narrow field of decisions, repeated service after service, with enough confidence to leave empty space around each plate.

A small menu with the grill close by

The method at Uno Mas is direct: char, salt, smoke, slice, pour. The para picar section does much of the first work at the table, with salted almonds, gilda skewers, paper-thin jamón and Padrón peppers setting the tempo before larger plates arrive. Reviewers have returned often to the tortilla, cooked baveuse rather than firm, and to anchovies in ajo blanco, where almond, olive oil and toast carry the fish without clutter. The grill gives the room its darker register. Squid and octopus come à la plancha, often with chimichurri or squid ink; lamb, halibut, solomillo and Delmonico sit on the larger side of the card. Dessert keeps the same economy. Flan de queso and milhojas do not need an architecture of garnish to hold attention. The beverage program has its own bench craft: Fino, manzanilla pasada, Raventos Cava, vermouth by the glass, Albariño, Canary Islands whites and Spanish reds chosen to meet salt, fat, smoke and vinegar rather than sit beside them politely.

The long narrow room

The room is long, high-ceilinged and close enough for the pass to register in the evening’s rhythm. Dark wood, low candlelight and a conversational hum soften the narrowness; the effect is intimate without asking the table to whisper. Plates move easily between hands. A glass of sherry finds the gilda, red wine follows the Delmonico, and the counter gives a view of the kitchen without turning the meal into theatre. Uno Mas has a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and its wine list won Star Wine List gold for Best Medium-Sized List 2023, but the room does not lean on those facts. It leans on pace. Food arrives in small runs, the table edits as it eats, and the staff keep the cellar close enough that a glass can change the shape of the next plate.

The cellar as the next course

The most concrete future here is already in motion: seasonal plates change, while the Spanish wine and sherry program keeps deepening the conversation between bottle and bench. End the meal slowly if the table allows it, with flan de queso and a final glass from the sherry list at Uno Mas.