Restaurant review: Little bites of heaven at Cork's Paradiso

In October Paradiso will celebrate its 30th birthday

Scorzonera, miso mayo, hazelnut rayu greens, pickled plum at Paradiso on Lancaster Quay, Cork. Picture: David Creedon

• Paradiso
• 16 Lancaster Quay, Cork
• Tel: [phone]
• Opening hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 5pm to 10pm
• www.paradiso.restaurant

In October later this year, Paradiso (originally opened as Cafe Paradiso) will celebrate its 30th birthday, making it, in ‘restaurant years’ one of the most venerable old stagers in the country. To reach such seniority in hospitality, especially, as a vegetarian restaurant operating in the high-end, fine dining sector outside of a major metropolitan area, is a very special achievement. True, there are others of similar vintage elsewhere in Ireland but few with such a storied history of culinary innovation.

The opening menu in those early years spurned then traditional, even stereotypical, tropes of vegetarianism — pulses and grains, in particular, gummy brown rice — lest diners suffocate under a surfeit of po-faced worthiness at the expense of pleasure on the plate. Instead, Denis Cotter focussed entirely on vegetables as the centrepiece of each dish, divining the essence of excellent produce then adding snap, crackle, and pop with judicious spicing inspired by Asiatic fusion encountered abroad. The impact was immediate, triggering reverberations in the Irish restaurant sector still evident to this day.

In 2001, one of Ireland’s finest growers, Ultan Walsh of Gort na Nain farm, in Nohoval, Co Cork, fetched up on Cotter’s doorstep with his own produce, including then unheard of Crown Prince squash, which Cotter knew and loved from his time in New Zealand. It was the beginning of a synergetic partnership that has endured to this day, Cotter and Walsh planning ahead for the year, seasonal menus based around Walsh’s superlative and eclectic produce.

Chefs Charlie O' Connell, Angie Coughlan, Head Chef Miguel Frutos, and John O' Halloran at Paradiso on Lancaster Quay, Cork. Picture: David Creedon

Paradiso’s renown became international, cemented by Cotter’s cookbooks, including Paradiso Seasons which won best vegetarian cookbook in the world at the Gourmand World Cookbook Fair in 2004. In 2019, at the inaugural and highly prestigious World Restaurant Awards, in Paris, Paradiso won the Big Plate ‘Collaboration of the Year’ award for its chef-farmer collaboration with Gort na Nain, acknowledging a globally pioneering model.

As it happens, I visit twice within two months, the first, a magnificent evening of carousing with three of my oldest comrades, The Foleys, during which we turn the wine menu inside out and eat great food. My return is with another posse of old friends, to a retrospective ‘setlist’ littered with classic Paradiso favourites.

We start with snacks: frivole is a take on Amanda Cohen’s Korean chicken wings-inspired battered, fried broccoli served in her Michelin-starred New York restaurant, Dirt Candy. Cotter instead opts for frivole, an elegant kale sprout, a lighter tempura batter adding crisp crunch, orange, ginger and fermented chilli supplying a potent zing. Dandan tofu minxo, sees usual Dandan noodles replaced with a melange of tofu, mushrooms and aubergine fried with five spice and hoisin sauce, served on a Spanish minxo, somewhere between flatbread and pancake. Spicy heat is abroad in all three with a lentil rasam also sporting a mulish, energising kick.

Aubergine, spinach, almond cheese, miso, walnut and broad beans is a Paradiso classic, spinach parcelled in aubergine, usually served with Knockalara cheese but with that finished for the season, instead served with almond ‘cheese’ and ‘fresh’ broad beans. (At the peak of growing season, the Paradiso team descend on Gort na Nain farm for a bean picking party, stowing away a vast horde in the freezer to see the kitchen through the winter.) It is quite delicious, very much the primary ‘colours’ of Paradiso on the plate, combining rich, comforting flavours, toothsome textures, and exotic fusion grace notes.

Interior of restaurant Paradiso. Picture: David Creedon

Pumpkin seed chocolate mole is a reworking of another long time favourite, bolshie chocolate sauce wearing a muscular chilli snap, along with crisp fried squares of polenta, roasted Crown Prince and pickled radish and toasted seeds.

Cáis na Tíre Tortellini is another from the repertoire, fudgy caramel of the cheese taking the bass line as lemon thyme and sweet leek hymn in the upper register and meaty, succulent hedgehog (pied de mouton) mushrooms thrum in the mid-range.

Braised turnip chestnut galette is an iconic Cotter dish but this rendition is precise, even dainty, served with a beetroot port gravy that plumbs depths and verdant crisp leaves of Brussel sprouts.

Desserts are a good Chocolate tart, with miso white chocolate, sesame and chilli; blood orange posset is creamy, citric and not too sweet, with dense, chewy almond ricciarelli on hand for the sugar rush. My favourite is quince, both sauce and poached, capturing the ethereal and elegant soul of this god of fruits, served up with rum mascarpone ice cream and a pecan snap.

Many of tonight’s dishes are comfortingly familiar but there is a new technical precision, thanks in no small part to the work of new head chef Miguel Frutos, a veteran of several Michelin starred kitchens but each presents with a vibrancy that is as fresh as ever.

Paradiso always offered a considered wine list but in more recent years the arrival of sommelier Dave O’Mahony as restaurant manager has seen an elevation to infinitely more rarified ground. A now quite superb selection is top heavy with natural wines making it one of the best natural wine offerings available in an Irish restaurant, Paradiso quaffing now every bit as pleasurable as Paradiso eating. Tonight, a more ‘restrained’ outing than my previous visit with The Foleys, we enjoy two cracking wines from Loire winemaker Nicolas Reau, Attention Chenin Mechant (Chenin Blanc, 2021) and Anjou Rouge Pompois (Cabernet Franc) and the wonderful crowd pleasing Gran Cerdo Tempranillo (Rioja Alta, Spain) for the natural wine ‘agnostics’ in our party.

Service too must be noted: warm and friendly, deceptively casual, yet delivery is sublimely professional, up there with the very best in the country.

Though tonight’s menu may cast a backward eye, more greatest hits than ‘new album’ this is no obituary for what is still one of Ireland’s most important restaurants. Rather it is tribute and evaluation of a deliberately celebratory menu acknowledging the Paradiso back catalogue in a very special year with several other exciting projects also in the pipeline to mark the occasion. So, let’s instead call this a midway appraisal with so much more to look forward to in the second half.

The Verdict

Food: 9

Service: 10

Value: 9

Atmosphere: 9.5

Tab: Set tasting menu €65 per person (excluding tip, wines, digestifs and coffees)