Restaurant Review: everything is just about perfect at Pilgrim’s in Rosscarbery
Picture: Dan Linehan
- South Square, Rosscarbery, West Cork
- Tel. 023 88 31796
- www.pilgrims.ie
- Opening Hours: Wed to Sat, 6pm to 9pm; Sunday lunch, 1pm to 4pm
It is the last night of our Irish camper van tour, hence the proposed blowout in Pilgrim’s. Though crammed with late summer traffic of Staycation Ireland, Rosscarbery is a treat: tree-lined footpaths frame South Square, buildings bedecked with late summer blooms.
When I am eventually crowned Emperor, I shall banish the cars entirely, decreeing the square’s wide tarmacadamed expanse be replaced with a continental-style park in which the citizenry can sit amongst greenery and daily enumerate their good fortunes to be living in what is already one of the nicest towns in West Cork.
Pilgrim’s large restored windows suck in the honeyed light of gloaming, softening further a serene, airy room. The floor is flagstone, furniture, plain pine. Wood-panelled ceiling, painted white, save bare beams. One of the rugged stone walls, also white, wears a ‘scarf’ of foraged dried herbs and flowers.
A zen-like atmosphere is augmented by the mothering welcome of Jennings’ business and life partner, Sadie Pearce, and it is bliss indeed to unravel at the table with gorgeous Cúl Dorcha, from West Kerry Brewery.
An amuse bouche, verdant padrón pepper, skin cracked and glistening with oil, carries a mulish kick heightened by dry spice, mollified by cashew ‘sour cream’. We attack it with carmelised nutty crusts of superb rye sourdough, shovelling, mopping, smearing.
The progeny’s starters are Japanese-style Tatsuta Age, plump, succulent tenders of deep-fried chicken, stacked in a cairn, with cinnamon basil, borage flowers and puffed rice. Seared spring onion dressing and ponzu adds citric umami. To even think ‘goujons’, would be heinous blasphemy.
Sublime house-cured albacore tuna comes with cucumber, tomato, peanut, peppery papalo and an entirely West Cork-grown Mexican-style aguachile (salsa of green chillis, tomatillos, caigua, and Peruvian cucumber). Tomatoes in a local salad are almost meaty — sweet fruity bubblegum zing folding into creamy Macroom buffalo mozzarella, shredded crispy kale and peppery nasturtium, leaves and flowers, add bite.
CW’s main course is pearlescent turbot, smooth, buttery flesh, with crunchy grilled summer cabbage leaves topped with floury Orla potato cubes, all swimming in rich, creamy mussel emulsion.
No 2 Son has exquisite Caherbeg Hereford Rib Eye, tender meat, dripping succulent juices, plumbing flavour’s depths, smoked garlic butter adding further ballast. Slow cooked courgettes, cherry tomatoes and capers are a gentle counterpoint.
Though vegetarian, my deep-fried fritters of summer squash flower are weightier still. First bite mines fleshy courgette, the second, an oozing well of caramel Cáis na Tíre sheep’s cheese. Oily, sweet, pressed aubergine, tomato and Puy lentil, yellow courgette sauce and sauteed summer beans have flavours and textures ricochetting off each other yet all making perfect elemental sense.
I need the sturdy companionship of a lush, spicy Grenache (Domaine De l’Ecu Trinity 2018) with crunchy tannic wherewithal to tackle bolshie big flavours. A side of roughly mashed steamed new Orla potatoes, smothered with seaweed butter and cider vinegar is a meal in itself.
We close with strawberries in honey and strawberry ‘broth’ with lemon verbena cream, wearing a crisp oatmeal tuile cap; shiny chocolate cremeux, paired with swollen, plump raspberries so large they might be on steroids. Corleggy ‘Cavanbert’, camembert-style soft washed rind cheese from the wonderful Silke Cropp, is perfectly poised on the cusp of salty, creamy gooeyness, though I have no room for a muffin-like sourdough pancake or a sweetly piquant whitecurrant compote.
Everything is just about perfect in Pilgrim’s, a beloved treasure. Jennings sources superbly: particularly plant produce from his own tunnels and other growers, including the splendidly outré output of Singing Frog Gardens, the latter furnishing novel Asian and South American grace notes in tonight’s meal.
His fine cooking is so flush with loving care and attention for the wonderful produce, I envisage a proud mother at the school gates, spitting on a hanky for one last scrub of her beloved offspring’s overly-rubbed red-raw cheek.
Food in West Cork has a hallowed history but currently a unique trinity of restaurants is delivering to an extraordinary level a hyper-local homage to world class produce from land and sea.
Pilgrim’s offering may appear more casual and homely, but, alongside Restaurant Chestnut (Ballydehob) and Dede at The Customs House (Baltimore), is an equal part of a culinary cluster you’d be hard-pressed to better elsewhere in Ireland.
