The Pantry and Corkscrew, Westport, Co Mayo

Recently opened - circa two months ago - this narrow little gem sits just off the square in Westport, Co Mayo. We walked in off the street. Frankly, it just looked inviting, and the menu made all the right sounds. I ordered up a pork sausage casoulet, with apple and cider, topped with a thin strip of potato rosti, in place of that typical crucnhy bean topping so beloved by the French.

Absent from the dish were the beans, but the broth was delicately and sweetly flavoured with the owners own cider, a complex, earthy, sweet and layered taste. The sausages were from Newport, Kellys butchers, who have just won a prize from the Black Pudding Confraternity of Good Food Lovers in France - they took bronze for their black pudding.

The sausages were meaty, with that texture you get from low meal/crumb content, and quite subtly flavoured. An almost perfect match for the broth and cider. One quibble. The sausages were a little undersalted. And casoulet needs beans.

At 8.95, an absolute steal of a meal, and the best by a country mile that I had all holiday.

The Gorgeous C had a cheese salad - can't remember the cheese, but it was tangy and mature, salty, sweet, a fantastic product, with thinly cut slices of ripe fig, dressing and chutney, all of which married perfectly. Care had obviously been taken in designing the dish.

The chips were good, fluffly, hand cut, well cooked, but the homemade ketchup was marvellous. Notes of cinammon, coriander, and, frankly, I don't know what else. Superb.( though, again, in need of a little salt).

Frankly, a damned fine dining experience. Considering the place has been open only two months, when the menu is fine tuned, it's going to be great. Right now, with locally sourced and made ingredients, an artisan slant, good pricing, and thoughtful cooking, it's acomplished. It's a little jewel, well on it's way to being polished.


The Pantry and Corkscrew, Peter st, near the Octagon and Wyatts Hotel, Wesport, Co Mayo, tel: 09826977


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One Pico, lunch, March 3rd

One Pico have a lunch deal on at the mo - who doesn't.

Two courses for 19.95, three for 25.

Situated just off Molesworth street, the room, somewhat neutrally appointed with a too severe kind of.... greywash, curious, indifferent art pieces on the wall breaking up the decorative monotony. I don't get the paintjob, tipping the balance over to the oppressive side of banal.

The seating is comfortable, spacious enough, and the room seems to absorb sound - tables are quite close together, but at no stage did I feel as if anyone was party to my conversations, nor I to theirs.

Now to the meat, or, in the Luscious Bs case, the two veg.

The menu had some vegetarian options. Some, is, frankly not enough. Pico's sister restaurant, Bleu on Dawson street, has, on occasion, sported no veg main option on their lunch menu. Hardly a menu then, hunting and hungry for all available custom in a recession and urban setting.

One Pico had two starter veg options, and one main. On request, they offered a second main of vegetables in/on puff pastry ("we could do you some vegetables, I'll check if chef has puff pastry - this was the dish description), so nebulously described by our wrongfooted waiter as to be both unorderable and meaningless (I'll have the puff pastry wotsit, in no obvious sauce....).

My starter, a ham hock terrine, was insipid. Underseasoned, with none of the fatty, earthy big baconed herbiness I expected. No big taste - not even of ham. It felt like it was straight from the fridge too, The mouthfeel was....well, not gelatinous, moist fat, or melting. None of that rich and trottery smoothness. It was big, roughly cut chunks of fairly flavourless, and coarsely textured pink meat adhering to one another by guilt of association. Insipid. The attached sauces were well made, but, again, could well have been far more robust. Ham hock terrine. It should be rich, and delicious, melting into a layered and gelatinous mouth coating flavours, and soft, slow cooked meat texture. This was... Well. It matched the decor. It was designed to go unnoticed.

A main of rib eye steak, with one of those curious forts of chips, and a bearnaise was fine. Good texture and taste to the bearnaise, the meat, rested, and competently cooked, rare as requested, nicely maillarded, and moist, juicy, though with a string of gristle running right through it. One of my chips - I had four - was made from a spoiled spud, having that mealy texture and distinctly off taste.

The desert, an Amalfi Lemon tart, with raspberry sorbet, and three fresh raspberries was the most interesting. Curiously, raspberries, being an autumn fruit, I was not expecting too much. But the sorbet was packed with a massive raspberry flavour, just the right side of sour, and enough sweetness to give that really moreish taste that an excellent raspberry dessert can deliver. Really characterful, and well balanced, each aspect confidently delivered. One small quibble, a raspberry with, again, off flavours. Too overripe, and thinking about rotting....

The Amalfi tart. Good texture, though the pastry was a little bland. The tart was, however, too tame for my tastes. Maybe the chef was worried about having two distinctly tart and acidic components on one plate, but diluting the lemon aspect was...well. It's a lemon tart. Without the crisp and really fresh acidity, it's missing it's most distinctive and intrinsic characteristic.

Cracking sorbet though. Cracking.

Service was attentive, without being encroaching. We had everything we could want from the staff, and nothing we didn't. Perfect actually. And distinctly friendly and pleasant as we left too. By far (sorbet and company excepted), the most pleasant part of the experience.

Overall. Technically proficient food, in a comfortable room. Some underwhelming tastes, some competent and good components, and only one dish really worth revisiting for. I have no particular interest, on this form, of revisiting. That said, on reputation, and a history of good reviews, it deserves a revisit.

And on price, many of the cities eateries would deliver a lunch of far inferior quality and ambition.

One Pico
Tel: +353 1 6760300
http://www.onepico.com/

Kim-chi restaurant

To the left is one of four starters from Dublins Kim Chi Restaurant. Located at the top of Parnell street, and recommended to me as an authentic taste of Korean cuisine, we chose it as a late night venue for a fond farewell to a work colleague.

The starter pictured is the rainbow roll, Korean style sushi comprising eel, prawn, salmon and tuna sushi rolls, with a dab of wasabi, and soy sauce on the side. The tastes cut through our drunken palates, cleanly, and crisply. The unexpected and gently building heat of wasabi combining terrifically with the pleasant purity of the sushi tastes.

We also had (pictured right) a starter of blocks of rice, daubed with wasabi, and a butterflied prawn, topped with roast, shredded sweet potato, with a side of pickled ginger and wasabi. The prawn had quite an amazing texture, fleshy and firm, and an unusually intact taste. The shredded sweet potato was addictively sweet, and the ginger the perfect side to cleanse the palate for another uncomplicated taste of simplicity.

This starter was a similar dish, but without the sweet potato, and topped with eel and salmon, to be dipped in soy sauce, and wasabi, and followed by a slice of pickled ginger to cleanse the palate. A fantastic introduction, accompanied by complimentary soup in small cups. And the aesthetic effect of these finely balanced, well put together, quite minimalist plates was startling.

As we moved on to main courses, I entirely lost track of what we ordered. It was, after all, a farewell party. For my own main, I ordered the Bulgogi, a beef dish marinated in soy sauce, pear puree, sesame oil, and a host of other ingredients, and served with a side of freshly washed lettuce, still wet, some boiled rice, and some fermented soybean paste.

The trick is to spoon the beef mix into the leaf, then some rice, and finally spoon over some paste, and wrap the concoction up in the fresh leaf, then eat. Quite an interesting and divine leaf, each flavour distinct and somewhat separate, but working together fantastically to counterpoint one another. And the freshly washed leaf brought a texture and fresh taste that was absolutely perfect.

We also had a 7 shot bottle of sake, warm, and two other starters, for the princely sum of €115, including tip. An amazing price for a truly memorable meal. The service was exemplary, with staff genuinely happy, it seemed to our beer soaked selves, to explain any queries we had about authenticity, recommendations, and pronunciation. Tables have buzzers to summon service, and food arrived in perfectly staggered stages. An amazing price for what I am told is an authentic taste of Korean cuisine.

Add to this the general ambience, where, on Parnell street, the melting pot of Dublin, the bar and restaurant was populated by pleasantly drunken Koreans, Irish, Poles, Germans, co-existing quite happily in a chilled out, beer fueled slow and comfortable gorge, and you have a truly memorable experience, which restored my optimism in both our culinary scene, and Irelands current experiment with multicultural identity.

On the downside, the restaurant is tiny, and is part of a larger and noisier bar, which also shares the seating space, so the ambience is distinctly informal. That was fine for our crowd, but it is not a fine dining venue. The seating is quite cramped, and again utterly informal, closer to bar seating than restaurant, and the tables are far too small to easily support the massive amounts of food the kitchen will effortlessly usher out and into your life.

These are not really complaints, though, just qualifications. It is an informal place. Pick up some beers, soak in the food, the tastes, the smiles, and the sounds - it also triples as a music venues - and feel rejuvenated. Its good for the soul. I may well become a regular.

Kimchi (also known as the Hop House). At the top of Parnell street. Enter and enjoy. (sorry, no phone number - they appear to be unlisted.)

Fillet of Soul, Manorhamilton.

The road to hell is paved with chicken Maryland.

The gorgeous C and I dined late, and somewhat tiredly in The Fillet of Soul, Main Street, Manorhamilton.

The decor is pleasant. A nice, faux coal gas fire, wooden floors, high backed, comfortable, black and white leather-backed wooden chairs.

The service is friendly and relaxed - they accepted or quite aggressively casual attire (sorry gorgeous C) entirely without comment, and we were never far from the waitress's attention.

The entrance hall is liberally plastered with awards. Is it just me, or is the current trend in Irish food awards equally meaningful, and meaningless? Egon Ronays award for actually existing. In 1987. The Irish food guides award for having a toilet. An Bord Bia Silver service award for gainfully employing mouth-breathers. Bord Faillte certified Botulism free since 1998.

Anthony Armstrong is Public Relations Officer for the Panel of Chefs Ireland(salt dough castle anyone? WTF?) , and patron chef at the Fillet.

Which is presumably why he couldn't wait and let his food market itsfuckingself.

Ahem. S'cuse me.

I couldn't make head nor tail of the menu. I had a main of "Maryland Twist Breaded escalope, bacon, sweet corn hash and kebab fruit fritters". I could almost, just about almost work out what I was probably going to get (What IS a Maryland Twist? An escalope of what?). Though it took a while to not quite get it. When whatever it was arrived, a kebab of deep fried fruit was poking impotently at a flailing 45 degree angle from a circle of bacon and potato mash. Like some hideous, fruit themed, priapic salute. Like some....god....jesus....I can see the bastard flailing genitally towards me as I type....ugh, I had that in my mouth....like some hideously flaccid citrus penis. Dipping pathetically as the waitress somewhat embarrassedly brought the bastard forth.

I may well have told the gorgeous C "Its alive", as lightning played apocalypically across my insane plate.

It was a mash, not a hash, a simple typo, I think, on the menu - though it could well have been my tiredness. The chicken escalope, some bizarrely flattened wafer thin disc of incinerated hate, had been tortured in a deep fat frier until its shattered remains were placed atop the carnage on my plate. Dry, dessicated, it was impossible to tell whether it had been breaded, or just dipped in flour and egg. And this chicken tasted like it had talked before the end.

The fritter kebab was an interesting idea. Deep fried kiwis, black and green grapes. And something else. Which is about as accurate as I can be. Served up in a wet,damp, soggy, flaccid and lukewarm batter. Terrible execution. And I have no idea what it was doing on my plate with a bacon and potato hash, and a savoury gravy. A bizarre and freakish combination. Terrifying to think of.

Chefs night off at the chippie, methinks.

The gorgeous C ordered,let me see....from memory...trout, mixed berries, scampi in a cream sauce with cajun.

Which didn't seem to make any kind of sense.

We figured it was a menu mistake. A typo. A firmatting screwup. Scampi and trout. Odd. Mixed berry what? With trout? And cajun? So we asked.

I had visions of some Aran-besmocked Pierre-monickered rusticism bellowing folkishy in an enthusiastic French patois before setting about our earholes with accordion accompaniment.

The gorgeous C suggested freshly grated Pierre. Folkishly so or no.

"Is this item correct?"
"Yes"
"With cajun what?"
"Y'know. With cajun."
"Spices?"

With cajun was, apparently correct.

Maryland Twists. Escalopes of uncertainty. Grated cajuns jiggling Frenchly. The menu was the worst, most confusingly written, fundamentally flawed missive of its type I've ever encountered. I think one of the food items is actually the beginning of Finnegans Wake. Theres a zombie Joyce in the back of that kitchen. And he's paid minimum wage.

The trout was well cooked. As were the scampi (soft, slightly shredded almost, beautiful colouring and texture). All three of them. Hidden underneath the trout to prop it up at a jaunty angle. The sauce, with cajun, was too sweet, and too strong. Almost as if the chef were afraid of the flavours they had created. And with little or no of the aromatih heat and depth I'd expect from a cajun style seasoning.

Accompanied by boiled veg - carrots, broccoli and potatoes, if memory serves. Boiled veg.

The whole experience was odd. A series of individually interesting ideas slapped together on plates they should never have co-existed on. Some ideas utterly lacked simple, basic, good execution. The overall impression was of an enthusiastic amateur chef hoping to overcome the deficit of skill and experience through sheer imagination. And it didn't work.

The basics were all wrong. Incinerated chicken. Fucking up the deep frying is a sign of aggressive incompetence. Oversweet sauces. Limp damp, lukewarm batter. And plates which made no sense to the palate, the eye, or indeed the pocket.

Two mains and a coffee set us back the guts of €50.

Fillet of Soul. Take the awards down, spellcheck your menu. Then bin it, and rewrite a simpler less ambitious affair. Keep penises off the plates. And out of your customers askance and utterly smacked gobs. Tell your service staff whats actually on the menu. Limit your plates to five ingredients apiece. Learn to cook the basics. And then it'll be worth €30.

Fillet of Soul, Manorhamilton. Co. Leitrim, Tel: (0)71 9856053, Email: info@filletofsoul.com

Fallon & Byrne, cellar wine bar

On our first visit we drank a 2003 Waterford Shiraz, from Stellenbosch on the waitresses recommendation, to accompany a baked Mont D'or cheese. The wine was unfortunately perfect. A frustrating depth of finish, complexity, with enough body to complement the dish. The ideal accompaniment to a dish that took 25 minutes to never arrive.

Two thirds of the way through the bottle, the waitress told us that they were out of stock. 25 minutes after ordering. Precisely the time it takes to bake Mont D'or. According to the now suddenly shifty waitress, the kitchen had spent the intervening 25 minutes feverishly ransacking the store cupboards looking for a small round menu-mentioned Mont D'or cheese. And the foodhall. Everywhere. Feverishly. Ransacked they did. She was a tad nervous.
It seemed much more likely that the order was placed, and, 25 minutes later when she went to pick up, suddenly clocked that it was off the menu. And panicked.

The waitresses considerable and well expressed expertise, delivered with genuine love for her subject was utterly undermined by the oversight. And the fact that she thought we were idiots.

Much better to admit the screwup straight off, and treat us as plausibly intelligent entities - We're out of stock. We should have told you thirty minutes ago. Here's what we're going to do to make it up.

This has been symptomatic of my experience of the cellar in Fallon and Byrne. Occasionally peerless service and expertise utterly undermined by blinding instances of inexcusable incompetence.

Another example. Asking for the name of a particular cheese on the plate we had ordered - that tasted and looked like a hard, brine washed, mature sheep's cheese, the waiter quite happily informed us, with the sublime confidence of the unassumingly moronic, that it was brie. I felt like his look of studied insouciance was intended to insult me. We both knew he was lying. We both knew he didn't know the answer. And we both knew he desperately hoped that I didn't know any better than he did. He then shiftily sidled off, hoping to escape before the dairy rubes at the table somehow rumbled his cunning soft cheese ploy.

Different evening, similar experience. A good recommendation on the first wine, involving two wine waiters conferring, and giving an educational precis of the two wines we had chosen. One of them came off break. Amazing. Perfect. Astounding.

On the second wine, moving from Amarone Serego Alighieri to an Australian Syrah, our request for new glasses went unheard. We had given up on the water we had requested. Which then arrived instead of glasses. And our food, all cold dishes, arrived over the course of 15 minutes. I've worked in kitchens. You have to try to fuck up the timing on antipasti. It's like syncopated jazz and cubism. It looks like any idiot could actuallydo it, but you have to be a special kind of idiot, a natural and pugnacious savant of ineptitude, or a true and malicious genius to pull it off. And some malicious genius in the kitchhen was hunched malevolently over the salad counter cranking out plates full of hate.

Either that, or the starter chef upstairs is a peculiarly talented natural moron.

When the new glasses did arrive the waiter left everything else on the table - the finished food platters and plates, the old glasses, the empty bottle, and the cutlery. Leaving us fumbling through a crowded tablescape of dinnerware, a jungle of the damn stuff. I think we lost the new girl in there somewhere.

The bill was wrong.

On finally re-encountering our original waiter, the level of service we had initially encountered resurfaced - the cracks in the evening were effortlessly glossed over in the subtlest of fashions. A discount. And he had the professional good grace to not draw attention to it. Perfect. He even seemed embarrassed. We tipped him personally. He was that good.

And this is my main problem with Fallon and Byrne at present. The inconsistency. The early evening staff, circa 5 o'clock, seem to be excellent. And its this level of service that the wine prices, quality and range require. But the staff coming on later to deal with the extra clientele are absolutely terrible. I can handle inexperience, and I can accept lack of expertise. A conscientious waiter can find ways around these as part of the learning experience. But a really bad waiter has to exert effort to achieve the type of experience recently foisted upon me in the name of making a profit.

And its the cannon fodder they use to shore up the late evening rush with that ruin the experience.

La Zucca Restaurant, Venice

Tucked away in a corner of the Sestiere San Polo , by the small, Ponte del Megio is La Zucca (literally, "The Pumpkin") restaurant. The canal side location is off the beaten track, and, for Venice, pleasantly quieter than the more popular sections of the city (though our visit was in January). The closest vaporetto stop, about 5 minutes walk, is the San Stea stop.

On our walk there we passed through residential areas, with working boats tied up in small backwater canals, washing hung out to dry from windows, local people walking, talking, eating and drinking, dogs fighting, teams of effortlessly machismo council workers arguing contentedly about heavy machinery...the everyday stuff a world away from where we were staying. The walk alone is worth it to see another side of the city...

La Zucca touted in the guides as a vegetarian restaurant, but, in fact has a mixed menu with fish, meat, vegetarian and some vegan dishes, reasonably priced, with a modest but accomplished winelist. I was there with the gorgeous, and directionally capable, C, and we both cursed finding the restaurant so late in our stay.

The emphasis is on seasonal ingredients - which typically includes preserved vegetables, pickled artichokes and peppers - and innovative cuisine. The Italians patronising the restaurant - mixed in with Americans, British, French and the gorgeous C and I - seemed to find some of the menu odd, unexpected, unusual, but soon settled down to an enjoyable meal.

We had 2 antipasti, 2 primi piatti with side dishes, and two desserts, and the restaurant was fine with us ordering a la carte.

The tagliatelle con carciofi e pecorino was good, not excellent, but good. Perhaps a little too understated and subdued. However the sgombro affumicato con patate limone (smoked mackerel with lemon potatoes) was amazing. An eye opener. A genuine epicurean surprise. The lemon potatoes were soft, moist, and beautifuly flavoured, lacking the bitterness I expected (salt preserved lemons?), and the smoked mackerel was delicate, and dissolved deliciously on the palate. The best smoked mackerel I have ever tasted. Simple food, expertly prepared. The zucca flan, a sweet, light, and entirely unexpected delight was made by someone with a passion equal to their expertise. It was, for me, one of the most interesting food moments of the past several years.

Dessert was a chocolate mousse - light, rich, deep and delicious, that type of dessert that in its turn swallows you with itself, I felt entombed in taste and love and chocolate, and, I think, a hazlenut semifreddo, - again light, intelligent, and delicate which the gorgeous C enjoyed immensely.

With a half bottle of house red, a half bottle of mineral water and a cappucino, the bill, with service came to circa €50. Almost more surprising than the flan.

Service was good, though difficult to get when busy - perhaps due to the small staff. Actually, for €50 the service was excellent. Presentation was uninspired. Which, to be honest, in no sense marred the experience. Reservations (tel (041) 52 41 570) are recommended, one day in advance, and on both our trips, the waiters spoke english.

And it was, by far, the best food we had in our week in Venice. Go there. Talk to the cultured American aesthete in the corner if he's in situ, and listen to his recommendations. Dress well, eat well, and enjoy.