Sova food vegan butcher review: A visit to a vegan butcher. Yes, seriously

It read like a joke on Twitter. Someone has opened a vegan butcher’s in Dublin 8. The neighbourhood has eaten itself and is now entirely made of parody and artisan cheese. But the Vegan Butcher is not a joke, it’s a small restaurant on Pleasants Street where I’m bringing three other meat eaters to try out what looks like an intriguing new idea.

Barto Sova came to live in Ireland from Poland 13 years ago. He was a long-time vegetarian and became a vegan three years ago. In 2013 he started running vegan pop-ups and a market stall. That evolved into a month-long pop up in Rathmines. Then last month he opened Sova Food Vegan Butcher in a former shop on Pleasants Street.

It’s a small room (with more tables upstairs), starkly decorated with white walls, distressed grey-washed panels and a painted floor. Tables are darkly varnished school desks and lightbulbs are oversized and filament-filled. It’s bring-your-own-bottle with no corkage if you’re eating the set menu.

I’ve brought my own cheese, or a box of it as a present for the friends. No eyebrows are raised or tantrums thrown. These are friendly vegans, even though the contraband is making its presence felt with a distinctly cheesy pong. It feels a bit like bringing a switched-off ghetto blaster into a silent monastery.

The menu at Vegan Butcher is meatier than a sausage makers’ convention. There’s a steak, a burger and schnitzels. But here’s the wheeze – and you’re going to either love or hate it – these are vegan versions of meat favourites, tribute acts who’ve stormed the main stage and will be your entertainment for the night.

In a good number of dishes this schtick works. There are “king skallops” made of juicy fried potato cakes topped with mushroom stalks that (and here you use a lot of imagination) might just look like small roe-less scallops.

Well, scallops it ain’t but it is a beautiful plate of food, sprinkled with marinated purple cauliflower and dotted with kelp caviar. Most importantly, it tastes of good vegetables, cooked from scratch without any attempt to fish up the flavour.

A melon and courgette (or zucchini as they’re called here) tartare is also a very photogenic plate of food. A tian of finely chopped watermelon and courgette tops some coconut polenta finished with a spooned swirl of avocado paste and a sticky vinegar blob. It is fine, but strangely dry given the watermelon element and needs more zing to bring it all together. I draw the short vegan straw with the seaweed chowder. It’s a language thing. Say chowder and I hear JFK and smell smoked haddock and thick spoon-sticking cream lodging in mussel shells and coating nubbly orange clams.

Here’s a bowl of watery soya cream with finely diced carrots, celery and still chewy potato. There’s a tiny frond of something that might be seaweed but otherwise it’s an insipid bowl of nothingness, a neither/nor kind of dish. Cornucopia’s broccoli and seaweed version would knock the socks off it.

I do better with my main course. It’s soya schnitzels – wedges of chewy soya meat substitute deep fried in good crispy batter. There’s a light green dill tartare that makes it work. The best thing on the plate is the mix of beautifully fried mushrooms and broad beans. Sadly a duchess potato has all the allure of expanding builder’s foam. A seitan (pronounced satan) steak is, typically, a spiced wheat, yeast and chickpea flour dumpling formed into steak patties and boiled in spiced stock. Despite that it’s not bad. It’s definitely not steak in taste or texture. But it’s an edible alternative.

A stack of potato pancakes with mushrooms and rocket needs salt (there’s none on the table) and a chia burger is a good, if sloppy take on a towering meat version of the same, with house-fermented cucumbers giving it a touch of class.

Desserts are of two halves. There’s a panna cotta which falls into the same category as the chowder. I’d rather they hadn’t gone to the trouble of pretending this is cooked cream and just served the fresh fruit that is stirred into it. The look of the half-eaten jar reminds one friend of an IVF story, and gives us a new unprintable name for this dessert.

A raspberry cheesecake tastes better when you chase the word “cheesecake” out of your synapses and taste it without any baggage. The male friend suggests it needs a new “romantic” name. Raspberry Rhapsody anyone? There’s an excellent €2 espresso to finish.

I like the generosity and style of the Vegan Butcher. It’s a promising start and with a €22.90 three-course menu an alluring invitation to leave your meat and cheese at the door  and dip a toe in vegan waters.

We live in food-fluid times where anyone, even the red-in-tooth-and-claw steak lover, can be vegan for a night. And the Vegan Butcher is a good place to start.

SOVA FOOD VEGAN BUTCHER, 51 Pleasants St, Dublin 8; Tel: 085-7277509
Facilities: Basic but fine
Music: Playing mostly in the kitchen
Food provenance: None
Wheelchair access: Yes
Vegetarian options: Unlimited
THE VERDICT: An interesting new option for the open-minded diner