And I think to myself, what a wonderful world!

Earlier this year, Mrs G and I received a very generous birthday present from my family: a voucher for Café Paradiso, a very nice vegetarian restaurant. The amount of the voucher was enough to cover a meal and a night's accommodation, or two meals. The Café is not close to where we live - it's in Cork, in the south of Ireland, while we live in Dublin, in the east. It's about 250km between the two. So the meal would not just be a meal, it would be a pleasant weekend away. Many times in the last six months we intended to go away for the weekend, but there were always other things happening - some expected, such as concerts, others less welcome, such as Mrs G's brother suffering a heart attack and spending 7 weeks in hospital. So it was with some relief that we finally had some time free last Saturday. We bid goodbye to our daughters, who are now old enough to look after themselves for a day or so, and set out on the road to Cork.

Motorways are a recent invention in Ireland. While the UK started building a motorway network in the 1950s, the Republic of Ireland remained motorway-free except for a couple of miles of road until the 2000s; the motorway half-ring around Dublin was only finished in 2005 and the two biggest cities in the country, Dublin and Cork, were only finally linked by motorway earlier this year. Cork used to be a long way away, taking between 4 and 5 hours to get to. Now it takes about 2 hours and 40 minutes, which is a pleasant enough drive. The sun was shining, it was dry although a bit windy, and the leaves were turning, making for a lovely view of the countryside. Our car has cruise control, so it almost drives itself. I just set it at the speed limit of 120kph and sat back - altogether a lovely drive. We stopped in Cashel, which has the most spectacular monastery in Ireland, built on a huge rock. There we found a small restaurant and had a bowl of soup for lunch. We didn't want to spoil our appetites for the main meal of the day.

Cork itself is a lovely city. We arrived about 4:30 and found our hotel. We had decided not to stay in the Café itself, as its accommodation looked a little bit eccentric, but we found a decent cheap hotel just across the road. We had about an hour to wander around the streets of the city before the shops started closing. Cork is built on an island between two branches of the River Lee. The word Cork comes from the Irish word Corcaigh meaning a swamp. Originally, there were a lot of branches of the river. As the city grew, they filled in some of these and built three large boulevards - Patrick Street, Grand Parade and South Mall. These are much wider than would be found in most Irish cities. The other streets, on the other hand, all all extremely narrow as befits streets in a city crammed into a small space. Many of these have now been pedestrianised, making it a very pleasant place for a stroll. The heart of the city is the covered market known as the English Market, were there are lots of organic food stalls, butchers, spice shops and good food emporiums. Here we bought some chocolate animals to bring back to the daughters and I treated myself to a box of Hadji Bey's Turkish Delight, a speciality of Cork since 1902 when an Armenian Christian fled from persecution in Istanbul and came just about as far as it is possible to go while remaining in Europe.

Café Paradiso is one of Ireland's best restaurants, and one of the few that is entirely vegetarian. Mrs G is almost a vegetarian - she will eat fish but not meat - so in most restaurants she only gets a choice of one vegetarian and one fish main course. It would be a pleasant change to have a menu where everything on the menu is edible.

The restaurant itself is on a fairly busy road - Western Road, which as you might expect is slightly to the west of the centre of the city. On the other side of Western Road is the southern branch of the River Lee, and across the other side of the river was our hotel, so we had to walk literally less than 100m to get to the restaurant. It's a small place with only about 20 tables. It's fairly plainly decorated, with neutral grey walls and some heavily coloured chairs backs (Byzantine purple is one of my favourite colours). There were some non-descript paintings on the walls.

I can't remember all the things on the menu, but we were spoiled for choice with about six different starters and six different main courses. Everything on the menu was qualified by exact descriptions of its origins - not just sheep's cheese but Knockalara sheep's cheese; not just honey but Gortnanain honey, from a particular farm. We were almost introduced to the bees.

We started with some nibbles while we chose our meal - olives, chillied cashew nuts, and pumpkin toast. Mrs G had a glass of prosecco with elderflower cordial - the bitterness of the elderflower complements the sweetness of the sparkling wine nicely. I had a glass of organic Corbières red wine.

For a starter, I had a 'pumpkin mezzaluna' which was a sort of pasta half-moon shape stuffed with pumpkin and served in lemon-chilli butter with nuts, shallots and spinach. Mrs G had a 'beetroot tartlet' with goat's cheese. For a main course, I had a beetroot risotto, which was probably one of the nicest risottos I've ever had. It had mint mixed in with it and was accompanied by fennel, cooked to mushiness as is proper for that vegetable. Mrs G had what was called a 'turnip galette'. It was like a lasagne, with slices of turnip instead of the layers of pasta, and a filling of mushrooms and pecan nuts. It was served with al dente brussel sprouts and mashed potato. Mrs G was never a great turnip fan but this sounded surprising so she had to try it.

To drink with the meal, we had another glass of the Corbières and a glass of Sauvignon Blanc.

For dessert I had a chocolate tart which had a really bitter chocolate flavour, accompanied by olive oil ice cream, while Mrs G had baklava (a Greek filo and honey dessert) with cardamom yogurt.

I've refrained from saying 'delicious' after describing each item, as they really were all delicious.

I finished off with a cup of black coffee, and this is the only thing I could fault the restaurant on - the coffee was far too hot, and was bitter. It was acceptable, but just about, not up to the standard of the rest of the cuisine. But then, I'm notoriously picky about my coffee.

The meal was not cheap. Not including the wine, it came to about €100 for the two of us. The wine was about €6-€7 a glass; this is good value by Irish standards, as wine is very heavily taxed by the Government, and some restaurants charge up to €8 a glass. But we had a voucher, and there is enough left on it for another meal some time in the next six months.

Cork is rather low-lying. A couple of years ago the river flooded and much of the city was underwater. The weathermen were predicting a similar storm for later on Sunday, with flooding in many coastal cities around Ireland. We decided the safest place to be was on higher ground, not hanging around a hotel on the banks of the river. So we didn't stay in Cork on the Sunday morning, but left soon after breakfast. The weather held out for the journey home and we had another lovely cruise through the Irish countryside, getting back home at about 2pm.

I can thoroughly recommend Café Paradiso and look forward to enjoying another meal there soon.

Gnomon

15.11.10 Front Page

Back Issue Page