Six by Nico is now serving its Chipper tasting menu in Ireland. Our critic takes her seat

It’s a wet Tuesday evening, Six by Nico has officially opened, and a queue of diners wait in the rain for the earlier tables to be turned, bags clanking. There are no no-shows. That’s what happens when your wine licence is late coming through and you’ve emailed to say that the first few days are BYOB with no corkage.

I spot a table of four hospitality people with an enviable line-up of bottles, a vista that seems to have cloned itself across every faux-marble table in the room.

Padded banquettes, dark wood, squiggly lights and open shelving inhabited by marauding succulents break the room into three sections, dominated in the middle by a bright, open kitchen. Our table is at one end, near the bar area, which I soon discover is not actually a bar but a service area, with a Bewley’s level of clattering as cutlery is brought out for each course. But it’s fine: the music is loud, everyone’s having a good time, and our BYOB of Envinate Taganan Blanco has been uncorked and poured into chilled glasses.

Six by Nico, I imagine, is intended as a fun riff on fine dining rather than anything too serious. It is particularly commendable for the thought that is put into the vegetarian options, which can be adapted for vegans

The €45 six-course menu changes every six weeks, but new locations in Nico Simeone’s fast-expanding chain of restaurants always kick off with the Chipper menu, which is based around a typical Glasgow-Italian chip shop. The only choice is between this and a six-course vegetarian option that follows the same theme. If you want to stretch to seven courses you can start with snacks for an extra €7.50, and for an additional €39 you can pair the dishes with matching wines.

Chips and cheese, a Parmesan foam sprinkled with crunchy bits that have the intensity of dried-soup powder, in a good way, dotted with curry oil and served with a rectangle of confit potato, is a seductive load of flavour to start the meal. As there is rennet in Parmesan, the vegetarian option is made with goat’s cheese.

Rich flavours continue with beurre blanc playing host to “scampi”, which is not prawn but monkfish cheek in crunchy deep-fried breadcrumbs. I find it a bit fishy, and prefer the vegetarian option, which substitutes a cauliflower beignet for the fish and tastes fresher with the gribiche, peas and pea shoots.

A steak pie sounds like an alarming amount of food at this stage in the menu, but it’s a mere morsel of 24-hour-cooked beef shin with mushroom duxelles. It’s a little bit one note, and again the vegetarian option has the edge. The duxelles balance nicely with a haggis made from chopped beetroot and oatmeal, topped with crunchy fried onions.

I am beginning to realise that there’s a bit of a theme going on here with all the crunchy bits. Maybe it’s an ASMR – or autonomous sensory meridian response – thing, that tingling sensation some people get from auditory stimuli, as the next course has brittle scraps of batter on top of cod, or halloumi for the vegetarian option. Both plates have swipes of sauce, confited fennel and tiny pieces of samphire.

The big guns – well, the smoke guns – come out for the cloche-covered dishes that follow. It’s a bit of theatre, but you may find a blast of that synthetic smoke leaves you feeling just a little bit sick by Nico, not helped by the fact that it seems to be there to mask the two weakest dishes, pork three ways and the vegetarian sweet-potato cannelloni.

Dessert is considerably tamer, a nugget of deep-fried Mars bar, accompanied by a glossy chocolate mousse and an Irn-Bru sorbet.

Six by Nico, I imagine, is intended as a fun riff on fine dining rather than anything too serious. Themes have included Alice in Wonderland, with an edible menu. It’s a well-oiled machine with dishes that have been tried and tested, and is particularly commendable for the thought that is put into the vegetarian options, which can be adapted for vegans.

It is a chain, with a clever pretext – an affordably priced menu – which has people coming back each time the theme changes. It is a concept that would not be out of place in a Disney resort.

And, just like any ride, as we approach the two-hour mark, our time is up. Our table is needed back. As we head out into the rain, the next queue has started to form, bags clanking. The show will start all over again, for another two-hour slot, and another trip on the fantastical Nico machine.

Dinner for two was €90

• Verdict Six affordable courses of fun
• Facilities Smart and compact. Royal Jelly hand wash and lotion
• Food provenance La Rousse, Sysco, Musgraves, Kish Fish, Little Cress vegetables and fruit
• Music Loud, dance and pop
• Vegetarian options Vegetarian menu and vegan on request
• Wheelchair access Room is accessible and there is a wheelchair toilet