Restaurant review: Early days, but good omens for this East Cork bistro and pub

The interior of Ballycotton's Salty Dog

The Salty Dog

Our rating: 7.5

About 30 years ago, Fred Desormeaux fetched up in Ballycotton as the new head chef of Spanish Point hotel, after more than a decade working in high-end restaurants in Paris and London. 

Having grown up in a small town in north west France, where he developed a lifelong grá for the sea, he liked the pace of life in the beautiful little cliff-top East Cork fishing village. 

What’s more, he found his true culinary passion in the holds of the local trawlers at the harbour wall below the hotel’s restaurant: Cooking the finest Irish seafood, a passion that has never since waned.

Life, however, is never static. Rapidly building a reputation, the talented and still ambitious Frenchman was lured to Greene’s Restaurant in Cork City, where I first fell in love with his cooking, and where he starred for several years. 

Then followed a peripatetic voyage through multiple establishments, in city and county.

Though he always turned out great food, ever generous and comforting, there was a sense that he pined to be back by the sea. 

Then he got a call from successful businessman Pearse Flynn, who had returned home to live in his native Ballycotton, bankrolling two new restaurants — Sea Church and Cush Ballycotton — under another local chef, Dan Guerin. 

I recently reviewed Guerin’s new venture, Cush Midleton, another Flynn-backed enterprise, in these pages.

Flynn made his pitch and Desormeaux accepted, coming ‘home’ to Ballycotton as the new executive head chef of Sea Church and The Salty Dog, a casual dining bistro/pub/guest house — with an emphasis on seafood in the former home of Cush Ballycotton.

On a very pleasant evening, Little Ray and I fetch up at The Salty Dog, where one side of the premises has been reclaimed to operate solely as a pub — no harm at all in a village that has seen a collection of great pubs fritter away to a mere handful over the years. 

The large open room with lovely views onto the harbour and bay remains intact, but we insist on first sitting out on the tiny terrace by the front door, the better to drink in that glorious vista and an equally glorious pint of stout.

Marc Lonergan is the head chef at The Salty Dog but Desormeaux’s influence is writ large on the menu, not least in the overly generous seafood platters, and quite literally in a dish entitled ‘Fred’s Mediterranean fish and seafood chowder’ (€14.50). When Flynn first contacted Desormeaux, he recalled eating it all those years ago during the Frenchman’s first stint in Ballycotton and requested it for their menu.

A single spoonful and you can see why, as fresh Irish fish meets the South of France in a potent tomato-driven bisque with anise undertones, a lighter broth that steers clear of the sludgier density favoured by many inferior Irish chowders. 

It is served with stout brown bread, also good, but I’m entirely focused on what must be one of the best chowders to be had in Ireland.

The Salty Dog is only open a few weeks when we dine, so the menu is in its infancy and I’m looking forward to seeing sea bass and salmon — both farmed, the former, imported — being replaced by more of the local catch.

Dill beer batter fish and chips with mushy peas and tartare sauce (€20.95) is a textbook example of this evergreen classic. Golden batter is light and crispy, beautifully seasoned, and lifted by dill’s brightness on the palate. 

Crucially, it is cooked all the way through, eventually caving in under the tooth to yield the motherlode, the perfectly cooked fresh fish.

Prawn and lobster roll (€29.50) has great gobbets of locally-landed lobster, succulent, toothsome, tender, and served in a soft roll with lemon coleslaw — although an overly free hand with the mayo means the process of putting it away gets pretty sloppy by the end. 

It comes with salad and good chips, smothered in truffle mayo and freshly-grated parmesan.

Panfried seatrout fillets (€23.95) are tender and almost sweet, perfectly partnered by a piscine saffron beurre blanc, though bolshie saffron is possibly overplayed. 

The spinach and ricotta tortellini on which the fish rests fail to match the rest of the dish, rubbery pasta and nutmeg completely overpowering the filling. I ignore the pasta and relish the fish.

The dessert menu is simplicity itself: Hot apple tarte tatin with vanilla ice cream (€8); chocolate fondant with salty caramel ice cream (€8); and a selection of baked treats from ‘Breda the Baker’, who turns out to be the same Breda Paul serving behind the bar in the other room.

We share the tatin, apples glazed to a gorgeous butterscotch golden, though less than crisp pastry suggests it was baked in the traditional manner, with the apples at the bottom of the pan, then flipped to serve. 

I pick up several of Breda’s baked treats, which we eat the next day: Bakewell tart, buttery base and sumptuous centre; orange squares with a sweet, citric crown of buttercream; and a moist, nutty, and lightly spiced carrot cake.

It may not be the fine dining of Cush Ballycotton but a wine list with just three whites, three reds, one rosé, one sparkling, really needs to nail it. Our Bender Paulessen Riesling (€42), served far too cold, doesn’t make a good showing. 

Little, however, needs to be altered about the pleasant, homely, and efficient service.

These may be early days for The Salty Dog and, already good, it is only going to get better as chef Lonergan does a very tidy job of realising Desormeaux’s vision — and it’s good to see Fred back ‘home’, hopefully for good.

• The Salty Dog
• The Pier
• Ballycotton, Co Cork
• Tel. [phone]
• The bill? €153.40