Restaurant review: Dillon’s Restaurant, Co Cork
Sometimes, we grandly imagine our adventures as inevitabilities brought on by fate or, if you’re former Mrs US President Nancy Reagan, a particular alignment of the stars and planets decrees whether or not that nascent superpower Grenada might be suppressed for a second time.
For decades, if not centuries, millions of otherwise rational and decent people lived — some amazingly still do — under the weighty cloud of preordination believing that a god of one colour or another — always a colour, never a gender — had mapped out their existence and that any effort they might make would be realigned by their bespoke celestial blueprint.
In my case, I get waylaid because I add two and two and end up in the wrong town, sometimes the wrong county but, as yet, never the wrong river, lake or country.
Whether I’ve ended up in the right life is a question worthy of one of one of those middle-aged (stretching that classification for all it’s worth) True Gaels’ triathlons, the ones that feed the soul rather than re-energise and re-sculpt the body — a few pints of porter, a generous steak and a premiership Amarone.
That such a response is almost seen as bestial — chauvinist at the very least — today, may be part of the answer.
That, once upon a time, I sometimes imagined myself an All Black trapped in a Corkman’s body may be another hint.
These things matter this week because we — DW as ever, a person who must occasionally wonder if she ended up in the wrong life — found ourselves in the wrong restaurant.
A colleague had told us that Dillon’s in Timoleague had reopened under new management — Richard Milnes and Antje Gesche.
The friend also mentioned a new venue so I, silly me, booked a table under the new name fuzzily imagining it was a new name adopted for Dillon’s. Not so.
In any event we arrived unannounced but were made very welcome and were even given the house phone to cancel the other table standing empty many, many miles away.
Mobile reception in West Cork is like integrity; we all wish for it but must deal with the world as we find it.
And, if the truth can be told, there are far, far worse places to arrive unexpectedly and unexpected than a small, pretty dining room in West Cork, one that for several years enjoyed something approaching a stellar reputation.
DW opened with ham hock, herb mayo, asparagus and hen egg.
It was a lovely formal/informal scattering of the various elements on the plate. It was bit like West Cork really, it gave the impression it almost happened by accident.
The casualness of the conceit was impressive and it tasted beautifully too; all earthy and salty but counterintuitively refreshing. I opened with a plate of lovely, soul-calming asparagus and courgette soup.
Sometimes you need to throw oil on the water rather than fuel on the fire and after my blunder, a counselling-demanding trauma in today’s hysterical world, it seemed almost an ambrosia. Silky smooth, soul-satisfying soup, alliteration in a bowl.
For her main course DW chose goat’s cheese, roast carrot, spiced carrott purée and crushed hazelnuts. It appeared as two roast carrots, a small round of goat’s cheese and supporting cast.
Had one of Tom Barry’s Flying Column been as lost in time as I had been lost on the roads west of Bandon and turned up in Dillon’s, the plate might not have sated him — no gender issues here either — but DW was more than happy. Pretty, dancers’ food enjoyed completly for what it was.
I chose John Dory which danced with capers, orange and anchovy sauce. It was enjoyable, good food if not spectacular. Desserts were good too, enjoyable, if not spectacular.
Service was provided enthusiastically by two young sisters and though they may not have been to the Roux school for waiters, they were more than attentive.
What a pity then that they had to deal with an ’oul grump complaining loudly that his port was served in the wrong glass.
I may have lost my way but he had lost his sense of proportion and forgotten that he was in relaxed West Cork.
This is a good, decent restaurant that deserves to do well, let’s hope it does.
7½/10
8/10
9/10
8/10
Dinner for two with wine — Gigondas €37.00 — with tea and coffee and a glass of wine came to €125.30, tip extra.
Pretty good, decent food in a restaurant that’s just opened, one that suggests that it will eventually realise the ambition expressed so bravely on its web site — Dillon’s — Where Food is Art.
Dillon’s Restaurant, Mill Street, Timoleague, Co Cork; tel: 023-8869609/086-3434234, www.dillonsrestaurant.ie
