Meal Ticket: Keshk, Mespil Road, Dublin 4

The Yotam Ottolenghi and Sabrina Ghaynour trend of Middle Eastern food has excited our tastebuds, and is celebrated by Irish cafés and restaurants such as Brother Hubbard in Dublin and Ard Bia in Galway. That’s where you’ll find the rose-water-infused baked yogurts and the dukkah sprinkled beetroot hummus championed by Ottolenghi and Ghaynour.

Keshk on Dublin’s Mespil Road is much more traditional and old-fashioned, in that its menu is a straightforward take on classics such as baba ghanouj, kafta and moussaka. Usually, a menu that claims to offer the food of three nations makes me nervous but here it makes sense. The culinary traditions of Greece, Turkey and Egypt have been swapped and shared throughout the ages, and it’s these that Keshk’s menu focuses on.

The hummus (€6.50) has a grainy, homemade texture, rather than suspiciously smooth, and pleasantly bitter with tahini. The accompanying pitta breads are soft, round and fluffy, served warm. The feta fritters (€6.75) are large chunks of feta covered in a coat of batter and deep-fried, as opposed to crumbled feta in a batter with mixed vegetables. The feta is intense served this way, but the grilled courgette that accompany them go some way to temper them.

A kafta in garlic butter (€16.95) is more like a meatball in a creamy curry sauce. The meat is flavoured well and cooked on a charcoal grill. The sauce itself has redeeming qualities but as a dish, with the accompanying rice, it doesn’t excite. The falafel (€15.95 for six pieces with a side salad and more fluffy pitta bread) are good, if a little dry. The desserts are the usual suspects of chocolate fudge cake and ice cream, the baklava (€5.50) being the top choice for dessert.

The service is friendly and efficient. The décor includes paintings of kashbahs and medinas on the walls, and instead of going for the full on Middle Eastern plush palace, the look is instead clean and comfy, if a little outdated and bland. Keshk is often noted for its bring your own beer or wine policy, and the fact that it has no corkage fee or extra charge for this.

They’re open for lunch, too, and serve most of the dinner menu at lunchtime prices. They also do takeaway and are on Deliveroo, so you can indulge in their hummus in the comfort of your own home.