Restaurant Review: Yay for stupendous burgers and stylish dine-at-home boxes
This precious piece of West Cork served up on your table makes for mighty healing indeed
- The Chestnut Tree, Staball Hill, Ballydehob, Co. Cork, P81X681
- Pre-order by phone: Thurs, Fri, 12pm and 4pm
- Tel: 028 25766 restaurantchestnutwestcork.ie
- Hackett's Bar, Main Street, Schull, Co Cork
- Tel. 028 28625 or 087 7165473. Opening Hours: Fri-Sun, 5pm to 9pm, Fri
- Facebook.com/yayburger & Instagram.com/Yay_burger
Draw a line between Ballydehob and Schull and you’ve pretty much delineated my own little geographical axis of ecstasy — a personal spiritual heartland of my beloved West Cork, a line bookended by two very splendid pubs with a pronounced musical bent.
Levi’s, in Ballydehob, an award-winning music venue, masterfully orchestrated by proprietors Joe O’Leary and Caroline O’Donnell, is my most favourite pub anywhere, full stop, each and every visit, an utter tonic for the soul.
Hackett’s, in Schull, operates in similar territory: homely yet effortlessly hip, a cosy stop for a swift draught before dinner or the perfect setting for a delirious night on the tiles with your best mates from Sodom, Gomorrah and all townlands in between.
I miss both dearly but, while Levi’s remains entirely shuttered, Sue Hackett has offered up her little pub’s kitchen to a pop-up takeaway burger operation, Yay Burger.
‘Takeaway burger’ is a loaded descriptor, once covering a multitude of sins, but the generally rising tide of Irish food standards has led to an abundance of upmarket burger offerings, further supplemented during the pandemic by other hospitality outlets pivoting to offer same. After all, everyone loves a burger and you don’t need a Michelin star to turn out a pretty decent one. However, Gemma Greany and Chris McDonald’s stupendous Yay Burger creations are a level above ‘pretty decent’.
It begins with sourcing: superb West Cork beef, from Twomey’s, in Bantry, dry-aged for 28 days, mixed with rib top fat and smoked bone marrow, and a larder of fine local provisions furnishing all trimmings.
Combinations are ingenious and innovative but at the core of each burger is a sublimely seasoned, deliciously textured, deeply-flavoured patty, lush, juicy, and sporting gentle smoky notes of charcoal and ashwood over which it is cooked.
La Daughter’s Classic (ketchup, carmelised onions) epitomises the elemental excellence of Yay Burger’s menu but weekly specials are an equal joy: Notorious P.I.G., features 14-hour BBQ free range pulled pork atop the beef patty, Dubliner cheddar, American mustard slaw, crispy onions, aioli, pickles, lettuce and tomato; Beef My Valentine adds ruby sour cream slaw, shallot, American cheese, crispy onions, house BBQ sauce, Gubbeen bacon in bright pink beetroot brioche bun.
Chicken appears in several iterations: our favourite being Chicken Shish: smokey, succulent grilled breast, chilli-laden za’atar salad, tzatziki and house flatbread. Each dish comes with delicious fried spuds in rosemary and garlic salt. With ‘finish-at-home’ kits in the pipeline, further expanding their geographical reach, Yay Burger is undoubtedly one of my culinary highlights of lockdown.
Another reason to love Levi’s: it takes roughly 20 steps to walk from there to Rob Krawczyk and Elaine Fleming’s fabulous Michelin-starred Restaurant Chestnut.
Sticks and Twigs To Go is billed as their more casual dine-at-home offering but impeccable standards remain, beginning with aesthetics. (Both are former art school students.) All packaging is commendably compostable or recyclable (ditto Yay Burger’s) but a stylishly understated delivery box, with rope handles and ink-stamped Chestnut logo, will never be flat-packed and binned; this is destined for storing treasured mementos or some similarly elevated fate.
First course: miniature loaves of nutty, homemade brown soda bread, smoked house butter made from cultured cream, smoked salmon, cured in beetroot, seaweed, and gin, pickles (cucumber, beetroot, onion) and herb and horseradish mayonnaise, gently acidified with yuzu juice; a simple yet sublime assemblage of interweaving tastes and textures worthy of a galaxy of stars.
Rather than, as is traditional, using fillet for Beef Wellington, gorgeous Waygu beef (again, from Twomey’s, in Bantry) is braised to allow for temperature variations of different domestic ovens. Encased in beautifully latticed pastry that finishes to a golden crisp, sumptuous braised meat is mixed with vinegar and a reduction of braising liquor. Velvety pureed celeriac, crisp ribbons of cabbage in herb butter and exquisite sweet, rich truffle and ramson seed caper jus, complete a superb dish.
Dessert is a baked sabayon of Colombian chocolate, with glacé morello cherries and fudgy raw Iranian pistachios, a deliciously decadent excursion beyond the borders of Krawcyzk’s more usual micro-locavore pantry and a poignant reminder of faraway places, for the moment beyond our reach.
So, it is comforting to learn Chestnut will begin home deliveries further afield from their Ballydehob base and, take it from me, this precious piece of West Cork served up on your table makes for mighty healing indeed.
