Cork: It’s time to eat and drink for Ireland

Jola Wojtowitz outside her (now closed) restaurant in Lower O’Connell Street in Kinsale.

LAST weekend when the staff in O’Brien’s Chop House in Lismore, Co Waterford finished cleaning up after Sunday lunch, the lights were turned off; the ovens went cold and they went for a few remorseful beers to wake the unfortunate and premature end of a wonderful project.

The clocks had indeed gone back. O’Brien’s Chop House was just the latest in a long and depressing list of restaurants forced to close because of this bloody, unforgiving recession. It followed Augustine’s, Dillons’, Mint, Mermaid, Gruel, Bentley’s, Jola’s, Poulot’s, two of Conrad Gallagher’s, Casino House and scores more restaurants no longer able to fend off the unsustainable reality represented by too many tables too often left empty.