RESTAURANTS:Good at what they do, and good at staying in business
AT THE HEIGHT of the Jonathan Ross/Russell Brand affair last year a cartoon appeared in the Daily Telegraph that showed an elderly couple, he with pipe and cardigan, she with twinset and pearls, driving along. She is leaning out the window of the car making two-fingered gestures at all and sundry while the husband says, “I do wish you wouldn’t be so edgy and contemporary.”
I was thinking about this as I made my way to a restaurant that is contemporary, but not edgy, to meet a chef for lunch. And the chef, Martijn Kajuiter of The Cliff House Hotel in Ardmore, is, just to complicate matters, both contemporary and edgy. At least in the Irish context. But this was Cork, and we live in uncertain times and the restaurant, the Club Brasserie, is playing not so much to its strengths as to the demands of the moment and of the business customers who come here in respectable numbers for lunch.
Head chef Harold Lynch, who demonstrated a real flair for bright, modern cooking when he was at Citrus in Douglas, is doing a pared-down, conservative lunch menu. Which, I’ve no doubt, is what the punters want. And it’s served in a lovely big diningroom with panelled walls, painted in an elegant grey, of the sort you get in the better class of château.
You have to judge restaurants according to how they see themselves. Nobody should go to Thornton’s for hearty Irish food; equally, nobody should go to, say, the Winding Stair, if they want foams, liquid nitrogen and culinary wizardry. Both are very, very good at what they set out to do.
The Club Brasserie, I suspect, is very good at staying in business. And while Cork has more edgy contemporariness than most Irish cities this doesn’t, in general, extend to food. Mind you, Cafe Paradiso, a vegetarian restaurant to which omnivores flock, has been edgy and contemporary since . . . well, before we started saying edgy and contemporary.
We had a good lunch. There was a seared beef salad with very fresh leaves, beef that was more cooked than seared (but which had proper flavour), little cubes of blue cheese and little cubes of fried potato. This got Martijn going on the role of spuds in Irish life. On one occasion, when serving a dish called “potatoes seven ways”, he was asked for more potato.
There was also a fine dish of papardelle, nicely al dente, with a full-on wild mushroom sauce that was not too creamy or heavy: a simple but very effective bit of cooking.
Plaice was billed as coming with a mustardy Breton sauce and we expressed concern at the possibility of the mustard overwhelming the dish. As a result, we got it with a beurre blanc with snipped chives, which was fine. And the fish was perfectly fresh and cooked to the very second of just doneness. Vegetables were the usual and, let’s face it, rather gloomy tricolour of carrots, mashed potato and broccoli. This is the season of devastation in the vegetable garden, as I know only too well, so I suppose there was the virtue of seasonality.
A hamburger with melted mozzarella and a slick of pesto (“The Italian Job”) came on a slice of ciabatta that resisted all attempts to cut it. It eventually succumbed to snapping. Crisp potato wedges and mayonnaise mixed with sundried tomato added, if not to the gaiety of the dish, at least to the substance.
We finished with decent enough bread and butter pudding, which is always good to see, and a more than decent, very coffeeish tiramisu. The coffee in the tiramisu was, to be honest, better than our double espressos, but there’s not a lot of truly good espresso in Ireland. A happy exception is the version served at the coffee stall in the English Market.
With two glasses of white wine, two of red wine and a bottle of Tipperary water, the bill for this pleasant lunch came to €94.60 before service. tdoorley@irishtimes.com
THE SMART MONEY
You can have the fish of the day with a glass of wine for a shade under €20, including service.
Wine Choice
This is a short but attractive list that would keep most of us happy. Minerally, dry Preiss-Zimmer Riesling from Alsace is very fairly priced at €23.95. Crisp Vina Cantosan Verdejo is the same price. Jean-Max Roger’s classic Sancerre is €36.95, and the gorgeous Puligny-Montrachet from Louis Carillon, at €79, is cheaper than you might think for real white Burgundy. The chunky, old-fashioned Rioja from Palacios Remondo is a sound buy at €25.95. Randall Grahm’s juicy Big House red (€27.50) is unusual in being a good value Californian. Guigal’s very respectable Crozes-Hermitage is €36.95 and the ripe, round Domaine Vieux Lazaret Châteauneuf-du-Pape is €45.95.