Restaurant review: The Claddagh, The Square, Blarney, Cork

THERE are days when you just want middle-of-the-road, keep-the-show-on-the road food — days when you don’t need, or even want, poppy-seed brown bread knitted by celibate artisan bakers; days you just can’t summon up the joie de vivre needed to make the prospect of crabmeat or pan-roasted cod named after the port in which its captor buys his marine diesel, seem even vaguely uplifting. 

So much — too much really — of eating out has become a two-way street of performance, pretence and acceptance that you need almost to be in a certain frame of mind to step up to the plate. You need to be prepared to enthusiastically play your part in the drama for it to succeed. Sometimes it’s best to accept that mood, predisposition and expectation are at least as likely to influence an evening as the food and drink and then plan accordingly.

With that in mind where better than a restaurant run by a Turk and his Irish partner, one that focuses on Italian food and is called the Claddagh Restaurant — and to complete an almost bizarre alignment of the stars of incongruity — seems perfectly at home on the Square in Blarney, Co Cork.