Restaurant Review: Elbow Lane's been dishing up tasty treats for a decade

Elbow Lane Brew and Smoke House, Cork

• Elbow Lane Brew and Smoke House 
• 4 Oliver Plunkett Street, Cork.
• Tel. [phone] 
• https://www.elbowlane.ie 
• Open 7 days a week, 5pm–9:30pm (last reservations)
• Tab: €197 (excluding tip)

Fast approaching the status of a venerable old stager, perhaps it is the secret knowledge that within this increasingly doddery husk hides the blithe spirit of a young fella forever stuck at 15, so I only tend to truly register my actual age when a much younger sibling hits a significant marker, the class of number where I find myself musing that said sibling is ‘getting on a bit’, until arrested by my own gulp-inducing seniority.

And so it is with the Market Lane Group ‘family’. The original flagship Market Lane restaurant, opened in 2007, now heads inexorably towards two decades in business, that alone meriting venerable old stager status in the hospitality game — which is why I am so surprised to learn Elbow Lane, second ‘youngest’ of the group’s five restaurants, is 10 this year.

Considering the average lifespan of a restaurant is three years, it is an achievement in itself even if the brothers Sharpe (head chef, Harrison; Ronan, front of house) are more recently arrived, by my reckoning, the third ‘regime’ to preside over Cork’s first live-fire cooking smokehouse.

The microbrewery to the rear was the other major attraction from the off, so it would be curmudgeonly not to imbibe while perusing the menu.

Jawbone Pale Ale may or may not improve my literacy skills but it is citric, floral, and briskly refreshing.

We order four small plates. It would take a heart of stone or pure cholesterol to bypass deep-fried pork belly with fish sauce caramel, chilli and peanut. It is spot on, crisped on the outside, tender and lush with fat.

On tasting smoked beetroot, poppy seed and dill pistou, horseradish whipped goat’s cheese, rye crackers, I can feel internal tectonic plates shifting, sensing there has been a radical shift upwards in levels at Elbow Lane.

Beetroot wears its smoky mantle with gravitas and aplomb, as dill-brightened pistou and creamy goat’s cheese, zippy with lactic tang, enervate the earthy tuber and an excellent, rustic cracker completes a super dish.

Pan-seared cod, lamb pastrami, pickled shallot and tarragon remoulade is another triumph. Exquisitely cooked fish, perfectly married to crisp shards of pastrami, an enchanting culinary throuple with remoulade’s acid snap.

Harissa goat sausage, smoked date jam, fennel salad features a big, bawdy sausage of immense heft and satyric flavours, well matched with dense sugars of confit date and the salad’s spritely anise, but it would be better again if the rather tight sausage was first slow-braised to tenderise meat, allowing a finishing smoky kiss of live fire to penetrate deeper within a more succulent, less dry sausage.

LD has her favourite low-smoked baby back ribs, a portion so large it dominates the table like a giant whale in a backyard paddling pool.

Cooking is absolutely on point, tender, yet not overly so, and very good house sauce, vibrating with tangy tomato and vinegar, seals the deal.

Aged, deeply flavoursome wood-grilled ribeye is crisp-browned, rugged, and slashed with grill marks, but has a heart of gentle, tender pink.

Melting compound butter with Cascade hops detonates further flavour bombs. After a begrudgingly shared taste, No 2 son sees this one out the door all on his lonesome.

Nowadays, one of my favoured methods for gauging standards is the quality of any vegetarian offering; Shimeji mushrooms, celeriac and lovage dumplings, black lentil bordelaise, smoked chestnut, reads exceptionally well on the menu.

On the plate, each individual component is well-delivered, rich potent flavours, immaculately balanced, not least wintery comforters that are the dumplings.

Yet, the dish fails as an ensemble, its flavours all clustered in the same earthy space, sorely in need of trilling contrast in the upper register. 

Similarly, texture is one-dimensional; fudgey dumplings, gelatinous mushrooms, dense smoked chestnut sauce, all crying out for a snappy textural counterpoint that even beluga lentils’ nutty bite fails to provide. 

Experimenting on the hoof, flavours buck up enormously with a daub of that electric house sauce, leftover from the ribs. Still, top marks for effort; a few tweaks would transmogrify ‘decent’ into ‘divine’.

Elbow chips are, I suspect, steamed first before being fried to a golden crunch, enhanced with paprika-forward spicing that renders them insanely addictive. 

‘Aioli’ on menus is rarely the genuine article, invariably egg-based garlic mayonnaise; this, the real McCoy, sublime virginal-white emulsion, solely of oil and garlic, canonises the chips.

Elbow Lane has always been good but comparatively new head chef Harrison is hitting new heights, his cooking now infused with the confidence of one who knows what he wants to achieve before even lifting a knife and with technical skills to realise his vision.

Brother Ronan meanwhile runs the room with a similar preternatural calm confidence and — earning bonus points from this particular quaffer — curates the best wine list by far of all the group’s restaurants, including our smashing Côtes du Rhône (Domaine Santa Duc 2022).

We finish with two smart and lovely desserts and cocktail barman Matt’s very well-worked Bulleit Rye-based The Sweet, The Smoked and The Sour, including — as you do — oak smoke. 

Elbow Lane, hitherto something of a pleasant afterthought when listing favourite local restaurants, is now to the fore of my future recommendations — I look forward to its 20th birthday.

The Verdict 

Food: 8.5

Service: 9.5 

Value: 9 

Atmosphere: 9 (bright, bustling and very stylish)