If a restaurant opens up in your favourite part of town, you know about it. For two painfully anticipatory weeks, I walked past the renovation activities on Drury Street, peeking through the stencilled sign, “Juanitos” at every opportunity. And finally, on the day that it opened, I was sitting on a train leaving Dublin for the holidays.
I relentlessly followed up on this mysterious new place online. It was the latest venture of Johnny Cooke, previously of Cooke’s Cafe on the very same Drury Street, with chef Lee Doyle. The names were not foreign to me, and my mind wandered back to the third floor of Brown Thomas, where The Restaurant, another Cooke venture, feeds shoppers.
I made up my mind to go as soon as I returned to the city. Now, here’s the thing. A positive narrative is easy, nice to write, and often expected. But having made my exceptions, a bad taste lingers in my mouth. It is not that Juanitos is bad, however. It is simply mediocre – a descriptor detested by food businesses everywhere.
When a menu is good, there should be no such a thing as a smart choice. But when on first glance you see that every trend and “hype” food of the past 12 months is somehow included, with little thought given to complimenting flavours or authenticity, you may be reduced to making one.
While it claims to be a place serving up Mexican soul food, the menu seems intent on covering three continents. If the Latin influences are to be preserved, the sight of burgers and bao buns need to go. It’s the familiar, steadfast combination of love and spices that makes soul food so incredibly delicious. The taste of home is not so much innovative as it is traditional.
The sit-down was a watered-down conciliatory experience. We went for lunch at 2pm when the place was half-full, and sat in a well-lit corner. Between friends, we tried a range of options after scanning the menus for both breakfast and lunch. As follows, the tacos of the day were flat, but acceptable, the chicken poorly marinated with a redundant sauce. The broth had a nice kick but no textural depth, and the avocado fries were a misplaced experiment.
If we were not discerning and it was just another lunch, perhaps the faults would not have been so intensely observed. Though criticising the new can be unjust, it depends on how it is done. Juanitos is not without potential – a lively attempt to serve up more than the standardised Tex-Mex tradition in Dublin should be welcomed. But the experience needs to be fine-tuned.
The set-up is light and casual, with bare brick and blue walls. The seating is dispersed in bars along the window and tables across the tiled floor. It is light, affable and accessible.
The staff are very friendly, and a quirkily confident member wearing a beanie slid in beside us to take our order, which made us laugh. It has a young, vibrant shuffle to the place and I would like to return, if not purely to experience the fun service again. It only remains for the kitchen to catch up.
