GOURMET SLIGO: ROSITA BOLANDvisits an ambitious culinary enterprise in Sligo
ANYONE WALKING THROUGH Sligo town in the past few weeks will have noticed Source, the newly opened, glass-fronted, three-storey landmark building on the corner of John Street. This ambitious three-part food emporium is bound to attract much interest locally and beyond.
On the ground floor there is a large and airy restaurant, with an open kitchen station in the centre, and a small area selling artisan local produce. One floor up is a wine and tapas bar, and on the top floor, where the elevation allows beautiful views across to Ben Bulben, is a cookery school.
It’s all lickety-spit new, having opened the week before Christmas, and is clearly a place making a big, brave statement: the cookery school alone is offering 66 courses for the first three months of the year.
Where to begin? The restaurant seats 70 and is open seven days a week, with service starting at 9.30am and last orders to the kitchen at 9.30pm (excluding Monday nights). The wine and tapas bar seats about the same number, and is open Tuesday to Sunday. The cookery school can cater for 24 people per class. That’s a lot of meals, glasses of vino, plates of tapas and cooking instruction to sell on an ongoing basis in any Irish city in a recession, let alone a medium-sized town.
The building, the business, and the Les Lys vineyard in France, which supplies the wine bar, is owned by developers Ray and Eileen Monahan, who are also behind the Johnston Court shopping centre in Sligo town. There are 30 staff in total, with four chefs, including head chef Gerard Reidy, manager Alan McGettigan and cookery school manager Eithna O’Sullivan.
Joe Grogan is a partner in the business. “I’m 16 years in Sligo working in the food and wine business, and there’s nothing else like this around,” he says. “The nearest cookery school is in Enniskillen. It’s an ambitious project, yes. We’re still feeling our way.”
The idea behind the name Source, which is the umbrella name for all three parts of the business, is to emphasise the local and identifiable sources of the food sold, cooked, and served on the premises. “Everything is Irish on our menu,” says Grogan, “and we’re using as many local suppliers as we can. We have our own tunnels for salads and vegetables.”
On the walls of the restaurant are several large and eye-catching photographs; these are Source’s suppliers. There is an arresting image of mussel farmer Charlie Kelly harvesting at the beach near Lissadell, and one of “chicken man” Richard Woodman, surrounded by part of his flock.
The menu is currently the same for lunch and dinner, with two daily special platters. Prices aren’t cheap. If you are eating a la carte at lunchtime, starters are between €11 and €13, with mains from €15 to €19 and desserts €5 to €8.
The best value is the “platter”, a choice of two different soups, mains, and desserts, for €13.50, and which changes daily. Sample dishes include pan-fried Donegal John Dory, cauliflower purée and cider raisins; loin of Sligo lamb, red cabbage, parsnip, black pudding croquet and rosemary jus; and homemade pappardelle, roast butternut squash, puy lentils, Cashel blue, and pumpkin seed crumble.
The eight house wines come from the French vineyard owned by the business, and include a 2008 Mercator Languedoc and a 2008 Viognier Chardonnay. The hot dishes will change once a month in the wine and tapas bar, which is furnished simply and elegantly with vintage Scandinavia tables and chairs. “Tapas” is a term that seems to be loosely applied – most of the food on offer is starter-type dishes, such as Burren smoked salmon, rather than strictly Spanish.
Those attending the cookery school may be distracted from peeling and chopping by the gorgeous views of the Sligo mountains and skyline. There must have been some reason to favour this floor, with its views, as a cookery school, rather than as the wine and tapas bar, but I can’t see it.
“We have a bit too many classes, to be honest,” confesses O’Sullivan, the cookery school manager. There are literally scores of different classes on offer between now and the end of March, ranging between one-off sessions to week-long courses, and classes once a week. They include making your own sausages, knife skills, making meals from leftovers, curry night, bread-making, baking for beginners, one-pot meals, masterclass in sauces, and a “spring lamb” two-parter where you get to see a lamb being boned, jointed, portioned and cooked, and then try it yourself.
The organisers will see which of these 66 courses prove to be most popular, then adapt subsequent programmes accordingly. Their target is for one full class of 24 students, five days a week. They will bring in local chefs and restaurateurs to do some of the demonstrations and classes, and work with local suppliers as much as possible, such as the “venison cookery” class with input from Sligo’s Coopershill venison farm.
“We’re offering quality, and we are hoping there is a market for it. We believe there is,” Grogan says optimistically. And he looks smilingly around at the lunchtime crowd, which is indeed impressively large for mid-week in January.
Source's lemon drizzle cake
225g soft butter
225g caster sugar
4 eggs
225g self raising flour
grated zest of 1 lemon
Drizzle topping
juice of 1 lemon
85g (one tbsp) icing sugar
Heat the oven to 180 degrees/gas four. Line a 1lb loaf tin with baking paper. Beat together the butter and sugar until they are pale and creamy. Add the eggs slowly, one at a time, slowly mixing them through. Sift in the flour and lemon zest. Mix until well combined. Spoon the mixture into the loaf tin. Level the top with a spoon. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until a knife inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.
While the cake is cooling, mix together the lemon juice and the icing sugar. Prick the cake with a fork and pour the drizzle mix over it. The juice will sink into the cake and the icing will form a lovely crisp topping. The cake will keep for three to four days in an airtight container or one month in a freezer.
Source, 1/2 John St, Sligo, 071-9147605, sourcesligo.ie
