Restaurant review: Splendid location and royally good food at Cork's Princes Street
Claire Nash of Nash 19.
As a driving force behind the transformation of Prince’s Street into a delightful al fresco dining space that warmed the cockles of a Covid-battered nation’s heart, restaurateur Claire Nash was left wondering why she was shutting up Nash 19 each day at 5.30 pm as her hospitality neighbours on the little city centre thoroughfare were setting up for yet another rip-roaring evening of outdoor dining.
After 30 years, Nash 19 is an institution on Leeside but its reputation has been entirely built as a daytime cafe-restaurant, serving breakfast, brunch, lunch and afternoon tea.
Though justly proud of her business, Nash had always harboured a hankering to try her hand at the holy grail, night service, when lights are lowered and candles twinkle, the emphasis switching from rapid high volume turnover of shoppers and office workers seeking sustenance to the infinitely more sybaritic experience of serving the social dining set, most especially those in the mood to party.
With some interior alterations, Nash installed a wine bar with a sharp list managed by sommelière, Paris Dowler, and indoor dining in Nash 19 promises to be a most cosy prospect in months to come, but for now, all action is streetside.
Last year’s seating arrangements got by on ramshackle charm and the demob euphoria of a recently liberated populace, but this year, Princes Street again acts as pathfinder, showing how outdoor dining should be done, especially in our highly erratic climate.
Slick custom-built canopies slot directly into purpose-built underground supports. Uniform furniture and smart-looking planted dividers run the length of the street. It is the real deal, equal to many of those continental street cafes we’d been pining after and once the heatwave hit, we forgot those entirely, instead ‘going on holidays' in Cork.
A September evening, temperatures are still clement and there’s an intoxicating buzz abroad on the street. Revelling in the atmosphere, we kick off with aperitifs and nibbles: salted Valencia almonds, good breads with seaweed butter and olive oil, then a sublime sashimi of locally-caught cod with Japanese Dressing and wasabi.
CW sticks with seafood, succulent, flavoursome Irish Prawns panfried in garlic butter with samphire, tomato concasse on top, then an elegant Cahirciveen Crab Plate of fresh crab, homemade mayonnaise and quite delicious fried breaded crab croquettes.
If you’re going to mine the canon for classics, then my bone marrow starter from Fergus Henderson’s restaurant St John playbook is an elemental experience of which I will never tire. Charred Black Angus bones house glistening, buttery marrow, rich, nutty and sweet, to be smeared over crusty hunks of good sourdough, topped with astringent aromatic parsley and a squeeze of lemon.
La Daughter skips starters, straight into a very decent heirloom tomato and roast pepper marinara spaghetti with rucola, book in hand, blissfully oblivious to the crowds, as if at home eating midweek supper.
I’d highly recommend the Nash 19 Producers Plate, a smorgasbord of cured meats, fish, cheese, terrine, a splendid introductory gastro-tour of certain fine local producers but having begun with marrow, I’m sticking with bones, slow-cooked lamb shank, tender meat, lush and languid, served with my beloved Puy lentils and a celeriac cream.
On the side, we have fries dressed with smoked butter and sea salt, a rather perfect combo, crisp skin-on chips enhanced with smokey salty richness while a divinely simple, simply divine heirloom tomato salad is a cleansing counterpoint.
A gorgeous balanced Beaujolais Villages (Jean-Marc Burgaud, Les Vignes de Lantignié, 2019), rich red fruit and violet flavours, chewy tannins and a soaring acidity on the finish, partners superbly, while CW’s balanced and enormously drinkable Chardonnay (Domaine Rijckaert, Arbois, Jura 2018) sports floral white peach notes and the body of a Burgundy.
Desserts are old school sinful comforters to be guiltily relished, sweated off the hips at some later date: Nash 19 Brownie with chocolate chip ice cream; iced Milles Feuille pastry sandwiching fresh cream and raspberries; and toffee-ish toothsome banoffee pie.
Nash’s daily-changing menus are a homely take on Irish-bistro, rock-solid and delicious cooking of superbly sourced local, seasonal Irish produce. Service too is commendably good, attentive, efficient and friendly. Delivering all that outdoors — where a constant parade of passersby on the footpaths provides endless diversion for people-watching diners seated on the road — makes for one of the most enjoyable dining experiences I’ve had in the city for years, a true tonic, sorely needed.
