Restaurant review: I've met my perfect food match at The Hatch
Diarmuid Murphy, co-proprietor, The Fish Kitchen, Bantry is offering a combination of takeaway and outdoor dining
- The Hatch@The Fish Kitchen
- New St, Town Lots, Bantry, Co. Cork, Ireland
- Tel. +00353(027)56651 thefishkitchen.ie
- Opening Hours: Tues, 12pm-3pm; Wed/Thurs, 10am-5pm; Fri/Sat, 10am-5pm, 5.30pm-9pm
I am finally pushing the chair away from the table and loosening the belt as we wind up our summering in West Cork — a seemingly endless procession of plate after plate of truly wonderful food.
We pass a terrific evening dining on the lawn at very gorgeous Lissard House, just outside Skibbereen, the venerable old house and estate set to finally realise its enormous potential under an enthusiastic new ownership regime. Chef Alex Petit is already laying down an early marker with sublime sourcing of exquisite West Cork produce, and once he truly finds his feet in this new kitchen with its own walled garden, Skibbereen will have a serious dining destination on its hands.
The best place to eat in Schull is the Sunday Farmer’s Market and along with delicious fresh produce from Lisheen Greens; cheeses and charcuterie from Gubbeen; and Brendan McCarthy’s sourdoughs, purchased from mother Eithne’s stall also offering excellent cakes, bakes, jams and preserves, we ‘breakfast’ with Effie’s cracking falafel and flatbread combo, followed by Nolwen’s crepes and superb coffees from Red Strand.
There is a sense in recent years that Bantry is regaining its joie de vivre of old, with food to the fore. Friday’s Bantry farmers market, on the Square, is a wild and wonderful array of organic fruit and veg, home baking, cheese, fish, meats, olives, eggs, honey, preserves, plants, local crafts, and random bric-a-brac.
Paddy O’Donoghue’s independent craft butchers, on Main St, remains one of the best in the West Cork and The Chocobean have a quirky little shop/cafe, selling a range of homemade Irish chocolates, candyfloss and hot chocolates and coffees.
Covid 19 has changed forever the business models of many cafes and restaurants: in-house seated dining models proving nowhere near as cost-effective as the alternative model forced upon them by the pandemic, some variation on deli/takeaway, sometimes with limited outdoor seating.
Sadly, one of my own favourites, Organico, has followed this route and the Dare sisters’ legendary café will be sorely missed in the town. However, the significant extra space it has afforded to the expansion of the organic foodstore yields what is now one of the best such shops in the country. The offering of local chemical-free or organic fruit and vegetables alone is quite superb and we grab juicy peaches, fine green salad leaves, and a truckload of Tim York’s candy-sweet tomatoes.
The Fish Kitchen is another forced to adapt, their bijou little upstairs dining space too small to make economic sense of opening under current restrictions. Instead, they have persisted with a combination of takeaway or limited outdoor dining on a clatter of street tables (only available on a walk-up basis, no reservations taken). It appears to be working quite splendidly.
Dishes include turbot with caper butter, steamed green veg and roast baby potatoes and grilled Bantry Bay lobster with garlic buttter, salad and chips. La Daughter and I opt for an old-school seaside favourite: fish and chips. Hake is a tricky customer, too easy to overcook, especially in the intense heat of a fryer but exquisite light, crisp and golden batter houses immaculately rendered fish, sweet, succulent and perfectly judged. Good tartare sauce is a fine counterpoint and high praise too for the careful portioning of good chips — as much as you’d want and no more.
From a small counter in the adjoining fish shop, they also sell excellent crab-salmon Marie Rose with good homemade brown soda bread, choice baked desserts, including tasty apple and almond slice, and excellent TokYou sushi from Piotr Wojakowski, in Skibbereen.
Pride of place is our ‘catch of the day’, The superlative Fish Kitchen seafood platter, a piscine smorgasbord from the waters around Bantry, along with six succulent, creamy oysters from Carlingford Lough. Condiments include flavoured mayos, aïoli, and pickled onions; and a crisp green salad comes with balsamic dressing. Prawns are big, bould and juicy; crab claws are sweet and succulent, and we smother all in lemon and garlic mayo.
Lording over it all is a fine, fresh, whole cooked lobster: sweet, salty flesh flush with marine umami — and we worry at the crevices for an age after we are sated, still seeking those last elusive morsels. I could eat like this until Judgement Day and, hopefully, when that final reckoning arrives, I will be assumed into West Cork.
