Restaurant review: This brilliant Baltimore spot could earn at least one Michelin star

Turkish-born chef Ahmet Dede's Hiberno-Turkish alliance brings the instinctual soul of his Turkish culinary heritage to bear on his love affair with hyper-local Irish produce

Chef Almet Dede at the Dede restaurant at the Customs House, Baltimore, Co Cork. Picture: Dan Linehan

Having splurged at the outset, summer rummages amongst all that wind and rain in search of a remaining fine day, somehow pulling one out of the bag, and we roll down into Baltimore on a gorgeous, sultry evening. There is a poignant giddiness abroad — one last end-of-season hurrah before facing into an ominously foreboding autumn/winter like few others that have gone before, and even at 6pm on a weekday, the dial is set to ‘party’ as we enter Dede at The Customs House for the first sitting.

Ahmet Dede is the Turkish-born chef who gave James Ellis and Robert Collender’s late, lamented Mews Restaurant — mere yards away — that final push towards a justly deserved Michelin Star. Sadly, Mews closed last year but Dede had fallen hard for Baltimore and West Cork produce, and when Maria Archer offered her newly-purchased and renovated Customs House nearby, their business partnership was born.