Restaurant review: Take a 'wine journey' with L'Atitude 51's meal kit
Beverley Mathews, owner/operator of L’Atitude 51Cafe & Wine Bar, on Union Quay, Cork. Picture: Joe McNamee
- L'Atitude 51
- Union Quay, Cork
- latitude51.ie
It never ceases to amaze me how accustomed we have grown to the new normality of life during pandemic. My first ever sighting last year of someone wearing a mask in public was jarring; now, only a very rare encounter with a maskless individual inside a shared public space elicits a similar response.
But now and then some random little trigger reminds me we are living through extraordinary times. The Ballymaloe House experience condensed into a couple of cardboard boxes and fetching up in my suburban kitchen on a Saturday night was most definitely such a trigger.
Our weekend kicks off with a Friday night L’Atitude51-at-Home box. It's not so much a meal kit as a ‘wine journey’ to a different global wine-producing region each week with complementary nibbles, pairing specialties and dishes from the same area as the featured wine. Tonight we are ‘off’ to ‘Normandie’, in northern France.
Poiré GRANIT is actually perry (pear ‘cider’) from biodynamic cider and perry producer, Eric Bordelet. And, though not a wine, its rich complex flavours and filigree-fine mousse make for a stunning champagne substitute.
It marries wonderfully with the excellent nibbles: Poulet Vallée D’Auge, a triumphant short pastry housing Calvados, apples and succulent, sweet, herby chicken. Smoked duck is twinned with carmelised pear. Potato, potato, fennel, and Milleens gratin is surprisingly light and Camembert and Neufchatel cheeses, are perfect and perfectly ripe. Dessert is sweet crepes, apple, and creme fraiche and our blissfully sated bellies confirm ‘nibbles’ is really quite the misnomer in this delightful little kit.
- Ballymaloe House
- Shanagarry, East Cork
- ballymaloe.ie
Ballymaloe House is the birthplace of modern Irish hospitality, where Myrtle Allen first brought together the pampering tropes of silver service with an entirely revolutionary concept in fine dining, elegant yet simple cooking of superb local, seasonal produce, a ‘locavore’ menu ever before it was a word.
That union remains special to this day but the bow that tied it all uniquely together was the effortless welcoming warmth of true Irish hospitality. It may have been refined cuisine delivered in an upmarket Irish country house but it was not remotely stuffy; close your eyes and it could be a friendly little B&B down the road in Ballycotton.
My hard-working, hard-living kitchen-dining room, is still some way off the Ballymaloe dining room so I haul out my mother’s finest wedding china, light enough candles for a Lourdes procession, and put the explicit filter on the Spotify playlist.
Current head chef, Dervilla O’Flynn, has absorbed Myrtle Allen’s ethos entirely and yet also brings her own discreet culinary sensibilities to bear. Our starter illustrates this perfectly: I’m not sure Myrtle would have smoked fresh hake with Earl Gray tea leaves, but she would have approved entirely of the finished product; equally, the accompanying homemade dill mayonnaise and pickled cucumber. It is a quintessential expression of Ballymaloe House cooking that is utterly transporting. Equally delicious is tender blanched sea kale served with grated parmesan and lemon-infused olive oil to be mopped up with a sweet-smelling, soft yeast bread.
“I don’t care for aubergine”, says Current Wife, when faced with her main course, Herb Scented Aubergine, with tomato and coconut sauce. She then tastes tender grilled slices, sandwiching toasted almonds and wild garlic, coated in crisp breadcrumbs. Her ecstatic response also requires an explicit filter. Suffice to say, she has now been most truly converted to aubergine.
My main course is an impossible and exquisite bounty: Nora Ahern’s duck breast, skin crisped, flesh, tender and pink, alongside pork belly of crunchy crackling and succulent fatty meat; rich flavoursome Marsala jus anoints both.
We share buttery wild garlic mash, sweet roast carrots and bright fresh garden kale. Myrtle could have served up such a dish in 1963; it is every bit as relevant in 2021 and, I’d hazard, every bit as gorgeous as Myrtle might have herself delivered.
A simple garden salad of fresh green leaves, ‘clears a path’ for dessert: baked vanilla custard and garden rhubarb in a cute little Weck preserving jar, served with Jane’s Biscuits, crunchy light shortbread.
It is, without doubt, one of the very best meal boxes of my lockdown to date — and merits especial praise for the minimum of fuss required to bring it to the table. All in all, a thoroughly commendable job of bringing a little bit of Ballymaloe House back home.
