New Dublin restaurant serving up fantastic food at phenomenal prices

Chung Lee, head chef at Sister7 at Fidelity Studio

BRYAN MEADE FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES

Fast forward three years, and Hayes’s big risk on BIGFAN has paid off in spades: even Michelin has listed it in its guide. We love BIGFAN — it is a “toast of the town” kind of spot, vibey, lively, deliciously good value and rightly raucously popular. However, a confession: we think we love its new sibling Sister7 more.

Sister7 brings Hayes’s stable to three (he recently opened Bootleg in the former Starbucks on Drury Street) and is his first Northside outpost. The space it sits in is Fidelity Studio, the dining offshoot of the adjoining, uber-cool Fidelity bar (formerly Dice Bar), where Queen and Benburb streets meet right on the Luas line. Fidelity is a collaboration between the crafty, cutting-edge microbrewery Whiplash and Hidden Agenda, the events company behind the seductively styled craft beer, cocktail and vinyl bar the Big Romance on Parnell Street).

If it feels as though BIGFAN is thronged with the Gen Z-ers, Sister7 is primed for millennials. A dash more mature and sleek, less on the main strip and more of a destination. Where BF is giving neon-tinged Hong Kong night market, Sister7 is a Shanghai salon. You won’t believe that this space used to be a Bargaintown. It is entering its “luxe land” era.

An early Friday evening table, and we are plonked down the back at the cheap seats. The literal last table in the joint, by the back door and DJ booth, which, thankfully, doesn’t kick in until our sitting is over. The space is seriously sympathetic to acoustics in its design, and has a killer sound system from Toby Hatchett (as seen at Hang Dai, Allta).

Chef-cured white sturgeon served with pickled daikon in a citrus dressing is the priciest dish, at €14.50

BRYAN MEADE FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES

On one side there’s a mix of booths for parties of six to ten, and one long, curved banquette punctuated by tables of two and four on the other. In the middle of the room sit smaller tables and high stool bar seating. It feels as if one row of smaller tables needs to be removed to give the space room to breathe. Staff have to play a game of dining room Tetris to get up and down the lines.

Sister7’s menu is “small plates tapas”, we keep hearing staff explain. In other words, “mostly Chinese but also wider-Asian small plates — about the size of tapas dishes — designed to be ordered to share”, lest the mention of tapas conjure anything Spanish in the mind.

The issue most people have with small plates, which arrive as and when ready rather than in a cohesive structure, is pace. Sometimes you’re left forking one sad, solitary plate for 20 minutes, other times you are balancing 11 dishes volleyed in quick succession from the kitchen. Here the pace falls into the latter category.

We order so many small plates — this is fill-yer-boots flavourtown territory, after all — and find ourselves overwhelmed by dishes early on, constantly trying to engineer the remaining space on the tiny square table in a dining equivalent of collage. We just about manage it while glaring at a four pax table nearby given to a couple who order half what we do. The staff clearly didn’t foresee us greedy guts galloping in, but if your plan is to order a truckload rather than a Mini Cooper quantity it is worth flagging.

The Sister7 bao

BRYAN MEADE FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES

Happily, almost every dish is a knockout. The juicy corn ribs in lip-tingling dry house rub stands out; ditto the generously packed prawn toast (on Bretzel Bakery sourdough) and the frankly stunning enoki mushrooms in a devilishly garlicky chilli oil dressing. Dinky puff pastry lengths come stuffed with minced char siu-style Iberico pork, and are sweet and jammy in a hoisin-like sauce, while the Fidelity fried chicken thigh is supremely crisp and fatty, juicy and tender inside.

A big disappointment is the Sister7 bao, which features dried-out braised beef short rib, among other flavours, none of which is exciting nor packs a punch. Likewise, are the xiao long bao the best we have had? No, but pleasing to eat — and find: they are notoriously tricky to make. The priciest dish, the chef-cured white sturgeon with pickled daikon, is overpowered by the perfumey citrus (yuzu or kumquat?) dressing, and warrants thinner slicing for the firm, lesser-found fish.

The sauces, dressings and garnishes, many using brews, experiments and spent products from Whiplash, are the real stars here –– and whispers tell us that some are soon to find themselves as products on the shelf.

The service is fantastic. Lots of young staff are impressively sharp and precise, and the dishes fly out of the kitchen onto the table. The five or six staff members we encounter are a testament to teamwork — it’d be worth going back to experience their service again, which is something that can’t be said for lots of restaurants in the city.

The prices here are pretty phenomenal, the space oozes elegance, the staff are fantastic and the flavours are bold, brave and craveworthy. Sister7, you’ve found two BIGFANS in us.

What we ate

Corn ribs, €7.50
Sweet and sourdough prawn toast, €9.80
Enoki fan, €8.90
Iberico char siu puff (2), €7
Fidelity fried chicken, €7.80
Lip sticks, €8
2 x Sister7 bao, €15
Xiao long bao (3), €12
Chun Li dumpling, €11.50
Chef-cured white sturgeon, €14.50
SIS7 sauce, €4.50

What we drank

Il Bolero, €12.50
Mango Groove, €13
Gran Cerdo Blanco (bottle), €29

Total: €161

If that, then these …

Great big spreads of Asian dishes to fill the table? Take three more:

Lucky Tortoise
Modern dim sum on Aungier Street and Temple Bar @lucky_tortoise; luckytortoise.ie

Hakkahan
Stoneybatter’s mostly Sichuan hotspot with terrific “small chow” @hakkahan_dublin; hakkahan.ie

Nightmarket
Order all the snacks and a bottle of riesling at this Thai institution in Ranelagh @nightmarketd6; nightmarket.ie

fidelitybar.ie/food; @sisterseven_bigfan; @fidelitydublin