Restaurant review: This is one of Cork’s most enjoyable restaurants
It is a comfortable, welcoming space with a frisson of hospitality magic fizzing in the air. Picture: Larry Cummins
Amongst the very first to bring the concept of brunch to Ireland in 2005 with the opening of Liberty Grill, Denis O’Mullane and Marianne Delaney have long served as one of my personal benchmarks of good restaurateurs.
Seasoned practitioners both, through multiple establishments, they are two of the most considered operators in Irish hospitality, so I relished the prospect of Probys Kitchen (PK) which opened last year, their partnership with chef Pat Browne, formerly of Ballymaloe Cookery School.
Though several restaurants have tried this location, all failed to stay the pace, despite it being a charming, high-ceilinged room with a little terrace.
The PK makeover is the best to date: clean, contemporary lines and simpatico lighting ooze understated luxury, as cream walls complement tan leather banquettes and bare wooden tables, while a glass wall delineates the ‘dining room’ from reception area. It is a comfortable, welcoming space with a frisson of hospitality magic fizzing in the air.
In other words, perfect for a remarkably diverse crowd, in terms of age, nationality and, on the surface, social predilections. Especially noteworthy is how at ease each group appears, broadening PK’s appeal, best exemplified by our own party: The Gambler and I, two ageing reprobates; our Japanese guest, in her early 30s, and teenage La Daughter; all of us perfectly at home.
The point of beef carpaccio is to savour the singular and elusive delicacy of raw beef, here a lovely sweetish metallic tang, and mayonnaise (in this case, truffle), parmesan shavings, rocket and wild garlic are ingredients regularly enlisted to complement a carpaccio.
However, excessive generosity threatens to eclipse the star turn, especially a deluge of potent mayonnaise and hefty skelps of umami-rich parmesan when gossamer shavings no heavier than a moth’s wing are required.
Irish asparagus features the best in Ireland, from Ultan Walsh’s Gort na Nain farm, in Nohoval, the immaculately poached spears partnered with salty feta and peppery watercress salad — simple yet magnificent.
Pan-fried tiger prawns come with sweet, piquant Cajun sauce and house toast, all pleasant though North Atlantic prawns would have added more complexity of flavour.
There has been a Levantine sensibility evident in Browne’s cooking since PK first opened and he nails baba ganoush, aubergine roasted over flame to a smokey, creamy and lush dip served with crispy flatbreads.
To the mains and The Gambler is justly all over his seafood curry, clams, mussels and prawns swimming in brightly spiced, sunflower yellow Goan-style curry, flush with the tropical sugars of coconut, pristine fragrant basmati rice as backdrop.
In Dublin, upon her arrival in Ireland, an Irish friend told our Japanese guest all Irish food was rubbish.
No rescued cult member has ever been deprogrammed with equivalent fervour as we set about correcting this outrageous canard, but her perfectly pan-fried hake, with divine, caramel-inflected lemon beurre blanc and more superb asparagus, completes the conversion more effectively in a single mouthful. She is in heaven, Irish culinary heaven.
Eyebrows are raised by chicken supreme on the menu, a ballsy choice, however La Daughter’s version features well cooked, tender chicken, with a punchy cardamom cream sauce and herbed orzo nicely underpinning the dish.
I suspect it’s a dish aimed at more cautious diners still splashing around in the shallow end of flavour’s pool.
My lamb shank, braised with smoked bacon, is superbly cooked, meat sliding languidly from the bone, graced by fat near rendered to melting, its intoxicating herbaceous flavour, an enhancer for the flesh. A timid tomato and bean sauce, however, is in sore need of acidity to contrast with the meat.
There are three sides. Potato and mushroom gratin is substantial and flavoursome even if a tad dry and could use further seasoning. Braised leeks are cooked almost to a sweet oniony mush, delicious but overwhelming after one or two mouthfuls — whole rings would have worked better.
Peperonata is the least successful: it includes verboten green peppers, invariably too low in natural sugars for a sweet dish, which I suspect is then compensated for with the addition of sugar. The end result is bland, saccharine and crying out to be enervated with vinegar’s acidity.
If I didn’t know it was wild garlic season, I most certainly do after a night in Probys Kitchen — it is used as a garnish for every single starter and main course, bar one. (A lacklustre tomato concasse also turns up several times.)
As an old chef mentor once told me, even garnishes must complement a dish; this priceless foraged Irish ingredient is poorly served by ubiquity, when a solitary outing, perhaps as a pesto or a sauce, would have maximised returns.
There is not a single poor dish and some very good ones but the overall menu would benefit from further consideration of how individual components, full dishes and single ingredients, work together: eg, ubiquitous wild garlic, peperonata as a side to lamb with tomato/bean sauce.
I’d also like to see Browne push flavour boundaries further, adding punch, potency, while dialling back the culinary Esperanto; Yes to exotic flavour accents, but less entire recipes. That edible identity is growing closer, but in the meantime, Probys Kitchen will have to suffice with merely being one of the city’s most enjoyable restaurant experiences.
- probyskitchen.ie
- Bill: €235 for 4
