Mamma Mia: Just like mamma makes it

Mamma Mia offers tasty comfort food just like your mother would make – if she's of the old-school Italian variety, writes CATHERINE CLEARY

IT’S EASY TO stand out from the crowd when there is no crowd. Dublin’s Grattan St is in the deadzone south of Merrion Square. By day the area bristles with suits. By night it’s emptier than a banjaxed Ulster Bank account. Except for this small Italian restaurant with footpath tables under a red canopy and a cosy interior. It’s bustling and if it was on any main street of a busy town it would blend in. Here, it’s the only sign of life immediately south of the National Maternity Hospital at Holles St. I’m guessing that’s why it’s called Mamma Mia.

Waiting for my friend, I enjoy the feeling of sitting on the street (although I am having my head drilled with a car alarm) and admire the old-fashioned “shoe hospital” sign in the building across the road. It seems appropriate to have a shoe hospital near a baby hospital. The arrival of one means the wearing down of the other. Mamma Mia is in one of the many unlovely buildings dropped into these Georgian streets. There are weatherworn plastic gingham tablecloths pegged to the tables and flimsy chairs with fleecy blankets over the backs of them for the dedicated al fresco diner or smoker.

Later in the evening a passing politician (there’s been a steady flow of Fine Gaelers all evening) describes it to my dining companion as “Dublin’s best-kept secret”. We’re told President Michael D Higgins is a regular visitor. And what is the secret? Well it’s encapsulated in the simple bowl of soup I get to start. It’s a butternut squash and potato soup (€6), a large round helping of yellow sunshine with a meaty-tasting stock base (I’m guessing chicken) that’s all good. I’d wager nothing that had to be unwrapped or pierced has gone into this soup, just plain honest ingredients, cooked slowly and carefully to let their flavours deepen and soften into a bowl of comforting broth.

In the spirit of summer we’ve ordered a bottle of the Italian house rosé, which comes at a reasonable €16 and is nicely chilled. Ali’s starter of Sicilian cheeses (€10) is great. The sheeps’ cheeses have a delicious delicate tang, some of them have olives embedded in their waxy depths. And they come with honey and a curious pot of jam which works in a sugar-meets-salty-cheese fashion. Ali’s seafood pasta (€15) is also great: beads of great orangey fish stock sauce, calamari, mussels and just-collapsed cherry tomatoes. My sirloin steak (€20) is the only duff note. Ordered medium rare, it’s dry and smothered with a too-hefty gorgonzola sauce and accompanied by a mediocre salad. I wouldn’t normally have ordered the steak and was sorry I did. Stick to the Italian classics, seems to be the lesson.

By dessert time we’ve deserted the street tables, moved inside and been joined by a third friend who, when I told her it was near the Holler, texted: “Yikes. Can you hear the screaming?” There is no screaming, only ooh-ing over the desserts, which are superb. Ali has an icecream cheesecake, a slab of frozen cheesiness with softly melted bits on a wonderful homemade base. Helen has a tiramisu made, not with lady fingers but with Amaretti biscuits. It’s gorgeously almondy with a caramel texture to the layers. I get a budino, a coffee-flavoured panna cotta, which is fantastic, like a creamy cup of coffee with gelatin added and then tipped with a voluptuous wobble onto a plate and dusted with chocolate powder.

Inside, Mamma Mia is a little more chic but still feels like a secret place, one you’d be delighted to stumble on in the backstreet of a hot Italian village on a holiday evening. It’s painted sludgy grey and decorated with interesting art, including a quartet of blind-folded men which, we discover, are the four Moors of the Sardinian flag.

Mamma Mia is the real deal, Italian cooking like a beloved Italian Mamma would do it, slowly, carefully and with a heavy hand on the cream and sugar for spectacular desserts.

Dinner for two with three desserts, one coffee and wine came to €87.90

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The hippest of Dublin 8 hangouts

In another time, Dublin 8's newest restaurant would have been "retail space" on the ground floor with another floor of cubicled offices above. Instead the corner space on the busy strip of Clanbrassil St has been left double-height and turned into the living/dining room for a large number of trendy young things.

Luca D'Alfonso and Aisling Rogerson, who have been cooking the food at the nearby weekend Food Co-op, are behind The Fumbally.

I've been here four times and each time I think I love it more. Much of the furniture was destined for landfill if the couple hadn't given it a new home. Old doors and a battered window inside give this modern concrete-floored space some character.

The food is gloriously cheap, simple and still work-in-progress, as they work towards expanding the menu and maybe opening weekends and evenings (at the moment they're closed at weekends as the food co-op happens).

€5 will buy you the falafel, served in a hefty wrap with beetroot and fresh greens or the Fumbally eggs also €5 which are true to their description: eggs scrambled with cheese, on a warm brioche with basil and tomato on top. Theyve recently added arancini – or rice balls – with salad, a pork and rhubarb open sandwich and an avocado and chili concoction

They do a crumbly homemade granola bar in which you can taste the butter and golden syrup and vanilla and walnut fudge for €1.20 which is so dangerously good, elasticated waistbands may be a feature in D8 wardrobes soon.

Yes you could play Hipster Bingo all day here (there is rarely someone without a beard or a bike) but The Fumbally is a brilliant place to lunch, brunch or lounge.

The Fumbally, Fumbally Lane, Dublin 8. Tel: 01-529 8732