Oysters’ haven
Why plant spuds we may never dig?
We worry about our carbon footprint. We fret about water shortages, we worry about how we will feed the soaring world population.
We worry about how we’ll possibly manage without Brian O’Driscoll and about what will happen if North Korea gets the big one. We worry that we have burgered Dobbin from next door. We worry about negative equity and we toss and turn worrying that Lazarus might, despite everything, rally the Soldiers of Destiny. Some of us worry about battery hens and Siberian Snow Leopards. More of us still fret about drained bogs and misplaced apostrophes — though one of these may not have apocalyptic consequences in every instance.
Many of us worry about fish and that we are misusing our seas in a dangerous way. Like Gaul this argument is divided in three — first, the commercial fishing industry is determined to stay in business, generate a profit and with as little official interference as is possible. The second group knows that what is going on is unsustainable. The third group, by far the great majority, couldn’t give a gob of tartar sauce either way and live for the moment.
Nevertheless, the pressures on our seas are unrelenting and the sums involved so great as to defy all but the firmest deterrents. Just last month one tuna, the first of the season, sold for €1.3m at Tokyo’s Tsukiji market. Though a marketing swizz, that death warrant price tag shows how revered the fish is — Japanese eat 80% of the bluefin tuna caught worldwide. Some of the 20% Japan didn’t get take ended up on the menu the night we — a guest appearance by CO’S — visited the relatively new Oysters on Cork City’s south channel riverfront.
Oysters is a seafood restaurant, but offers alternatives that once had legs or feathers. It replaced the much-lamented Agustine’s, so that legacy sets the bar pretty high. And, by and large, it passed muster easily, though the enthusiasm for sweeping away dishes before they were finished was intrusive.
CO’S opened with quail, served with an apple chutney and French toast and it was impressive, a lovely mix of sweet, earthy tastes. To be recommended.
I chose scallops with butternut squash, coral terrine and seaweed beurre blanc, and it was lovely and as cheering as this lovely shellfish can be. That was until I saw Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Fish Fight the very next night and something resembling a conscience stirred. He showed how wild scallops are harvested and the sea bed destruction the practice causes. I have tried to convince myself that the Oysters scallops were farmed and arrived on my plate without causing any great collateral damage. How very difficult it is to be a restaurateur — not only do you have to satisfy appetites you must be able to tick the arbitrary ethics boxes as well!
CO’S followed with char-grilled bass with an orange and fennel stuffing, all amplified by fig and a vanilla emulsion. She pronounced it altogether fine but not especially memorable.
My main course — a beautiful dish if done properly with the right piece of fish — Dover sole on the bone was cooked using more butter than I had seen on this dish before. The richness, the depth of the butter may have clouded the pertness of the fish but it was satisfying.
Desserts were excellent — cheese for CO’S and a very generous raspberry and lavender crème brûlée for me. The wine, despite tradition, was very nice Italian red Barbera d’Alba, light with real personality and texture.
Oysters is a good restaurant in a fine setting serving good food but it may be doing itself a disservice by not being more explicit about the origins of its fish.
If they were it would, after all, be one less thing to worry about. Really.
