Restaurant Review: Elbow Lane operating at full throttle — it's so good to be back
Elbow Lane: back in the game. Pic: Naomi Kamat Photography
- Elbow Lane Brew and Smokehouse, 4 Oliver Plunkett Street, Cork
- elbowlane.ie
- Tel. +353 21 239 0479
It has been akin to putting down 161 consecutive ‘Good Fridays’ in old money: endless days of no respite falling one after the other, as we were prevented from enacting one of our most important social rituals, that communal act so deeply beneficial for mind, body and soul, of sitting down to break bread and raise a glass with friends and family.
It is early evening on a passable June Bank Holiday Monday that nonetheless feels like high summer on foot of recent mini-winter and you’d need a heart of stone not to be swept along by the palpable buzz that prevails around Cork as the hospitality sector reopens for outdoor dining after five months of lockdown.
Town is flush with revellers, more than a few pretty flushed themselves on account of sterling commitment to revelling, but the mood is upbeat, even ecstatic in places. Princes Street, outdoor dining’s earliest adopter, leads the charge, hosting a serried rank of large colourful canopies running the length of the thoroughfare, tables underneath — all packed.
Other establishments stage similar operations along Oliver Plunkett St and its various arteries and at the top end, where the Market Lane mothership and her cluster of offshoot restaurants reside, there is a carnival atmosphere under the large and capacious canopies as we take our seats outside Elbow Lane Brew & Smokehouse.
I order a pint of porter from their in-house micro-brewery, my first seated pint in a long time but, fine and all as it is, I subsequently question my rather prosaic choice when I spy all and sundry around me hoofing back the cocktails.
Yep, it may be a ‘school night’ closing the long weekend but the dial is set to ‘party’ and SpouseGirl (rechristened after endlessly complaining at being dubbed, ‘Current Wife’) is with them, plumping for a nicely astringent Rosado (Sweet organic Rosé wine, Aperol, jasmine pearl syrup, fresh lemon).
Crisp pork crackers seasoned with fennel salt, black pepper, sage and lemon zest are insanely addictive and last nano-seconds, with No 2 Son and La Daughter tearing into them like wild beasts, and SG and I divide a fine plump, succulent Rossmore Oyster, grill baked and served with lemon, chili & chervil.
Cracking low-smoked brisket roll is lush, rich braised beef as a crisp croquette, served with tart, fruity rojak sauce while koji-cured beetroot’s rich umami sinks deep into its meaty textures, along with white asparagus, walnut dressing and rye crackers.
No 2 Son and LD are unanimous in plumping for Slow smoked baby back ribs, immaculately rendered as flavoursome flesh still retaining plenty of ‘chew’. Proof of their premium quality is soon evident as sauce-smeared progeny tear through a high stack of bare bones in search of remaining morsels. They are served with French beans fried in tempura batter, a riff on the classic Lisbon street food version using Romano beans, a fond taste memory from our last family trip ‘out along foreign’ in that time before Covid, here rendered as delicious savoury textures seasoned with our own added poignancy.
SG has stunning whole John Dory, golden and carmelised on the wood-fired grill, glistening under melting butter infused with Cascade hops, celeriac remoulade, an elegant partner.
My main course is vegetarian: smokey grilled aubergine, crisp and flavoursome goat’s cheese polenta, crisp baby white turnip, and smoked tomato sauce; it carries meaty, savoury heft and textures and flavours contrast well. We add excellent smoked king oyster mushrooms, with chorizo and smoked aioli, and Elbow chips, as sides, and a pleasing Chianti (Mediceo 2019) handles the multiplicity of flavours quite deftly.
Desserts are very good: Mascarpone Sorbet with extraordinary Bushby’s Raspberries, white chocolate, nutmeg sponge cake, rose meringue; Malt Chocolate Mousse with toffee amaranth, tonka bean marshmallow; and a baked Wicklow Blue cheese, a gorgeous comforter that would serve equally well as a starter and main course.
To be honest, it is so good to be back dining out, I’d have made do with grilled handbag and warm discount store lager but to have found one of Cork’s best restaurants operating at full throttle on the ‘opening game of the season’ is a joy almost beyond compare and were it not for LD having school in the morning, they’d still be wrestling us out of the place. It’s so very good to be back!
