Restaurant review: Ali's Kitchen, Cork

As restaurants are to my belly, so bookshops are to my brain, I love both equally and there are even times when one will do the job of the other. 

I especially love secondhand bookshops for therein lie the real treasures, and my most favourite of all was Connolly’s, on Paul St. Connolly’s wasn’t simply a clearing-house for abandoned cheap paperbacks, stacked high and sold by the pound; it housed the wonderfully esoteric and wide-ranging selection of a discerning bibliophile and, for over 30 years, I gorged on the contents of Adrian Connolly’s shelves.

One afternoon, ten years ago, I started talking to the man himself with whom I’d hitherto barely exchanged the functional grunts of commerce conducted.