Cork: Strasbourg Goose
IF Angela Merkel ever tries to book a Saturday night table in a restaurant around Cork city we could be in a bit of bother. She might discover, despite everything foisted upon us, that there’s a bit of life in the old dog just yet. It may just be a one-night-a-week spike but if you leave it too late to put your name on a weekend table you may not get to eat in a restaurant of your choice.
We may be skint but pass the menu and the wine list. A red and a white to start everyone, ok? Ah shure you’re grand, we’ll share the taxi. Cocktails anyone?
Imagine trying to explain that exuberance, that life-saving seam of carp diem defiance, to the frau controlling the drip-feed budget sustaining Europe’s bankrupts. Try telling her that despite our protests about Austerity Ireland some restaurants close their Saturday night reservations book mid week.
Austerity Ireland indeed. This was, I think, the third or fourth time I tried to get a Saturday table at French Church Street’s Strasbourg Goose, but because so many people had such contrasting reports about it, and because I may have been spoilt as a child, I persisted. We eventually got a table but it came with a warning: “We want the table back before nine, if that’s ok you can have it.”
Maybe Angela was coming. When we arrived — early for a 7.15 booking — the place was full and as soon as guests left a table it was rearranged and a new set of punters ushered in faster than Zebo throws a shimmy.
Dinner, three courses, came at a market-bursting €21 — which, even with supplements for some steaks, was a declaration, a Strasbourg Treaty of sorts. Cheap and cheerful but don’t expect anything as soul-filling as goose, even an Austerity Ireland one from West Cork.
And so it proved. The menu was basic and there were, for someone spoilt as a child, lots of shortcuts, lots of accountancy cooking.
DW’s opener, p‚té with salad, garlic bread and cranberry sauce — not the usual Cumberland — was the first indication of what it takes to get three courses to table for €21. There was nothing especially mean about it, just a kind of blandness, a dish that said it didn’t have to do anything other than exist. A spreadsheet on a plate.
My starter, homemade sausages, arrived forlorn and alone except for a tennis ball splodge of mashed potato draped with something that in a former life might have been barbecue sauce. Or abandoned tomatoes, or reduced red lemonade and peppers. Maybe Crimea. Your guess is as good as mine.
For her main course DW chose hake with vegetables and potato. It was fine but entirely ordinary and well within the compass of any home cook who knows that there’s more to teflon than Alan Shatter.
My choice, a rib eye with blue cheese, cooked rare, was like the FCA is like the army. All the right things in the right places, all the right buttons on the uniforms and all the orders garrotted in our First National Language, but when the Russians invade you’d prefer the real thing. The steak was ok and the cheese covered the meat, bland and grey like nursing home bedclothes — an effect pretty hard to realise with blue cheese.
Desserts were production line, austerity-sanctioned sugar things on a plate. The wine, an Australian called Starfish, carried a warning: “may contain nuts or dairy products.” Not even Michael Noonan at his avuncular, most patient best could explain that to Frau Merkel.
The Strasbourg Goose is very popular and has been so for years. Its pricing policy seems to have paid dividends but this forces its own limitations. It had no sense of occasion, not a hint of anything sublime or interesting, not a whiff of curiosity or celebration. But then you could say the same about André Rieu, one of the most popular performers alive. Me? I’d prefer a good boiled egg in front of the TV. So might Angela.
Dinner for two, three courses with wine and coffee came to €64.50, tip extra.
Mon to Sat, 12.30pm to 10pm; Sun, 1pm to 10pm
Food: 5/10
Service: 6/10
Ambience: 5/10
Wine: 2/10
Value: 4/10
