Restaurant review: The 'real deal' is just so great when dining out
- Good Day Deli Garden Café
- Nano Nagle Place, Douglas Street, Cork City
- Tel. 021 4322107
- Opening Hours: Tuesday to Sundays, 10am to 5pm, last orders 4pm
- gooddaydeli.ie
I’ve been dreaming of this one for quite some time, a return to one of my most beloved dining spaces in the city — a venue at which I’ve always been as happy to eat outside as in, even in pre-Covid days, for it is located in the bucolic gardens of the Nano Nagle Centre, in the heart of Cork city.
This serene retreat, accessed from ever-bustling Douglas St, never fails to effect a glorious transformation on the spirit by the time you have passed through the entrance and shop and ascended the stairs to the walled garden oasis. Today, a roped-off section of the usually pristine lawns is enclosing a glorious wild meadow on the cusp of fully blossoming in an unseasonably late flowering summer. Let’s hope it doesn’t see the shears for some time yet.
The blessed little bun in Sister-In-Law’s oven is pretty much fully baked and she, SpouseGirl and Mother-In-Law had planned on a baby shower lunch before the slated arrival next week but their plans came a cropper — so the trio have hitched their wagon to my planned outing with a pair of the progeny.
In the morning, M-in-L is crying off, citing blustery wind and a less than seasonal nip in the late June air, but I swear blind that we’ll be as cosy as Eskimos in an igloo. Not quite but while the wind does betimes nose its way into our gazebo perch looking down onto the gardens and out across the city, we tuck M-in-L into the most sheltered corner and she is very content, even refusing an offer to fire up the overhead heater.
I dole out a smug round of I-Told-You-So’s to slightly shivering progeny, who shrugged off earlier warnings to bring an extra layer — it bears endless repetition, people, dining out in Ireland is entirely feasible most of the year so long as you come prepared.
Eagle-eyed readers will have noted that I reviewed The Good Day Deli home meal kit just a few months ago but, wonderful and all as it was, meal kit versus dining in situ is akin to receiving a lovely postcard from an exotic destination and actually getting to travel to said destination. We pass several minutes simply marvelling at our presence in paradise.
Then the procession of wonderful dishes commences, focussing the mind, returning all attentions to the table. La Daughter has lightly battered cod and handcut chips that is an exemplar of how a dish from a ‘Kids’ Menu’ should be delivered: a reduced version of an excellent dish any discerning adult would be equally happy to eat.
Eating for two, S-in-L opts for the legendary GDD Halloumi Stack — a daunting tower of seared Toonsbridge halloumi, roasted organic tomatoes, poached organic eggs, on sourdough toast with parsley pesto. She clears the plate with a vigorous relish that suggests the impending arrival might well be a ‘good grubber’.
A good grubber himself at birth and continuing in that fashion ever since, No 2 Son takes on Island Bay Huevos Rancheros like a combine harvester mowing the front lawn, a remorseless ingestion of delicious spiced organic beans, organic fried eggs, on Blanco Nino corn tacos, with fresh tomato salsa, mixed greens and sour cream.
For all the pleasure to be derived from a GDD home meal box, it was never going to be able to deliver their most popular dish of all, Kai Moana fish tacos, freshly fried goujons of battered cod flecked with black sesame, served on Blanco Nino corn tortillas with crunchy raw slaw, pickle and coriander aioli, paprika chips on the side.
With SG and M-in-L both opting for this, my preferred choice, professionalism forces me elsewhere on the menu to the mighty GDD Big Kiwi Burger, a fine house-made lentil burger, topped with creamy Ardsallagh Goat’s Cheese, sweet beet relish, carmelised onions, leafy greens, grated carrot and served with handcut chips. Very lovely, very filling, so much so, I manage only the skimpiest of suppers later that night.
Also for sharing: Summer Salad of grilled nectarines and Macroom Buffalo bocconcini; spiced carrot fritters with a beetroot medley and sesame lavosh bread; and seared halloumi, Bushby’s strawberries and pesto, but such is the bounty, much of it is boxed for taking home.
There’s nothing like a parade of baked confections to revive seemingly vanquished appetites and this particular selection is a full-blown Mardi Gras of sweet temptations. Cakes are: Beamish Stout and Chocolate Cake; Carrot, Ginger and Walnut; and a vegan Kiwi Lamington (sponge, rolled in chocolate and desiccated coconut).
A splendidly overwrought S’more Choux, has choux pastry filled with chocolate cream and apple caramel, glazed with chocolate on a sablé shortbread biscuit while Raspberry Sunshine features the same sablé pastry, this time as a tart, housing sponge soaked with raspberry coulis, a set lemon cream, topped with torched Italian meringue and Bushby’s utterly sublime Raspberries. We finish with superb coffees, featuring Tony Speight’s wonderful West Cork Coffee — just one in a litany of fine producers supplying the GDD larder.
Thankfully, it is downhill from our perch as we can just about roll out of the place utterly sated, in body and soul, and I suspect this latest impending addition to the family has also been given a mighty boost of lifeforce to welcome it into the world. A good day, indeed!
