Restaurant review: Iyer’s samosas are the stuff of legend

And beef this good — from West Cork Burger Company — is only crying out to be grilled on the BBQ

Sat, 22 May, 2021 - 08:10

Joe McNamee

West Cork Burger Company has saved my life or at least filled my belly at several festivals over the years, so their WCB meal kit (great value at €40, serving eight, with all the trimmings) seems the perfect opportunity for a long overdue review. The USP is the beef: directly sourced from West Cork farms by splendid Macroom butcher/WCB partner Michael Twomey, Wagyu and Angus, a particular speciality.

While most Gaels believe BBQs only go with shorts and suncream, I’ve been defying the ongoing wintery monsoon, following the credo of an old Tennessee pitmaster of former acquaintance, who told me that the best BBQ is cooked just outside the kitchen door, year- round, through winter’s worst — even Christmas Day turkey.

For the past month, I have been defying the elements to cook al fresco and, despite kit instructions to pan fry, beef this good is only crying out to be grilled on the BBQ. As fat and juices cascade onto white-hot coals, flame and smoke sear and season. Resting and assemblage completed, we bite into succulent smokey burgers, carmelised on the outside, juicy and tender within.

Though its origins may be ambiguous, the classic burger is universally perceived as an American creation but that doesn’t mean their version remains an unalterable gold standard.

Just as the English invented football but gradually learned that other countries were often more naturally gifted exponents of the ‘beautiful game’, so the US burger is a starting point for innovation not slavish imitation.

West Cork Burger Company - has a meal kit for €40

Accordingly, the current fad for flavourless ‘American’ cheese has us baffled. We cast it aside. ‘Irish cheese’ is even more ‘challenging’: artificially orange, glistening sheen, a throwback to a grim past. We bin it, instead dressing this fine burger as it should be, today, Hegarty’s Cheddar and Crozier Blue to yield the ‘Brazil of Burgers’!

We have mostly avoided reviewing takeaways because of unavoidable delays between kitchen and table but chef Gautham Iyer’s dishes manage the journey better than most — not least because his generous hand with glowing ginger and chilli compensates for any slight drop in degrees of temperature.

Chilli Cassava sees the native South American tuber parboiled and marinaded overnight in ginger, garlic, chilli and celery powder and then coated with flour and deep fried for a deeply comforting and ‘meatier’ take on a potato, a side dish becoming a main player.

Methi Mutter Masala is a sweet, rich and creamy curry, enervated by the anise of fresh fenugreek leaves and the gentle toothsome crunch of green peas while Channa Masala is a more robust chilli-forward chickpea curry of bold flavour and bite. We mop both with roti flat bread and shards of pappadam and stir them into steamed basmati rice.

Iyer’s samosas are the stuff of legend, and we dip them in Sambar, a healing, head-cleansing broth of lentil, tamarind, spices and coconut with cubes of aubergine, carrot and okra.

Mung Dhal Tikki Chaat sees the pulse three-quarters cooked, then whisked into a mousse-like puree, sprinkled with crunchy sprouted beans and served with mung bean croquettes, delicious with pickled green chillis.

A simple bowl of lentil dhal must be one of the most elemental and comforting dishes in world cuisine, a delicious ‘mush’, ‘baby food’ for all ages. Iyer adds alchemical complexities without sacrificing its grounding embrace, charcoal-smoking dhal with chilli and ghee just before it is finished — a masterclass in improving on perfection.

Desserts are all baked, exquisitely sumptuously rich yet elevated by their spiced grace notes: Pistachio and Rosewater Cake, Pomegranate and Orange Cake, Dark Chocolate Pear and Cardamom Cake, Chai Masala Brownie.

A staff member prepares a West Cork Burger Company order for a customer

This review, combining carnivorous fare with entirely vegetarian or vegan food, is intended to be neither flippant nor provocative. For the sake of the planet, we desperately need to move away from mindless, unsustainable overconsumption of animal flesh.

The WCB production chain — from farm to craft butcher to consumer — illustrates perfectly how meat could and should be consumed: eaten less often but paying more to the primary producer, the farmer, for a premium product rather than perpetuating the iniquities of the industrial meat processing sector and its insatiable desire for cheap meat.

The other part of the equation is to eat more vegetarian food. Eat vegetarian food as delicious and life-sustaining as Gautham Iyer’s and even the greatest carnivore will be truly sated.

Iyer’s