Restaurant review: Bastion in Kinsale is a secret treasure just crying out for discovery
Bastion Restaurant, Kinsale. Pictures: Chani Anderson
The seasonal influx of day trippers and tourists is crucial to the survival of Kinsale’s vibrant local hospitality sector. Right on Cork City’s doorstep, spur-of-the-moment ‘spins down to Kinsale’ are a near civic duty of any urbanite Corkonian but are very much a sunshine sport.
With a good friend living in the town, I visit as often in winter and, when nights are as bleakly cold as they are interminably long, I even wonder if I prefer the cosy charm of Kinsale’s snug hibernal hospitality shelter from the elements.
A 5.15pm booking on a cold, grey Sunday in early March, however, tests that preference to its limits. After a weekend driving around the country and with ‘school’ in the morning, this evening I’d really prefer the sanctuary of my own sofa.
The streets of Kinsale are science- fiction thriller empty, almost eerily so, and we are the first customers in Bastion, only recently re-opened for the season. The Discovery tasting menu, a truncated version of the full tasting menu, is available before the main sitting of the evening and is a canny means of savouring Bastion’s fare while keeping a weather eye on the wallet. We are first to arrive but co-owner Helen Noonan soon confers her own warming glow on the room.
As if we were sitting in her own dining room at home, my sofa is swiftly forgotten, and we are entirely settled in as her husband and co-owner, chef Paul McDonald, brings out our first ‘snacks’.
Cep mushroom meringue is an edible paradox, airy, light meringue imbued with potent fungal flavours, while slow roasted onion and Madeira bring a fulsome sweetness to a lush filling of mascarpone.
Tartlet of milk-poached sea bass is emulsified with olive oil, a sumptuous cream with spritely pops of pimento espelette, gorse and dill, capped with Goatsbridge trout roe. In a filo ‘boat’, tartare of Michael Twomey’s waygu beef, from Macroom, is sweet and metallic, sharpened with piquant Dijon mustard and pickles, a sumptuous daub of Hegarty’s cheddar mousse fleshes out the flavour profile.
Cured langoustine is the first dish proper, as precisely assembled and pretty as a Swiss watch. Rockall langoustine is cured to a near-buttery texture, seasoned with lemon and olive oil, and ringed with little balls of apple compressed with Pernod, a sweet, clean zing of anise. Gentle lactic acidity of a set buttermilk cream and horseradish’s peppery nip complete a very good dish.
Next is a laminated bread roll, almost croissant-like save for the addition of wholewheat flour which adds savoury muscle to texture and flavour, quite gorgeous with butter.
A prime piece of halibut is poached in citrus beurre blanc, served with squash roasted in duck fat and slender discs of squash pickle; a lustily robust bisque makes an already good dish very good indeed.
McDonald sources well from the local larder but is not above roaming further afield. Anjou pigeon, from France, is a domesticated young squab with less of the gaminess of wild pigeon, but there is still an iron-laden richness to the tender flesh which is capped with a crunchy coriander crumb. Alongside is local-as-it-gets cavolo nero from nearby Horizon Farms, salt-baked beetroot and a delightful fruity sauce including blackcurrant and beetroot emulsified with duck fat.
A superb and sublimely balanced Chenin Blanc (Domaine Mosse, 2023, Loire) is perfectly able for every dish, astringent honey and fleshy white fruits, all immaculately structured.
Milk chocolate cremeux is an unashamed crowd-pleaser, Michelin technique meeting the familiar confectionery tropes of childhood. Pedro Ximinez sherry caramel in the centre adds an adult-rating while seams of crisp hazelnut feuilletine carry universal appeal. It comes with a smashing espresso ice cream. Amongst petits fours, an equally appealing peanut butter and chocolate truffle puts a grin on the face at the end of a very good meal.
Kinsale has long held a national reputation as a gourmet destination and yet Bastion, its only ever Michelin-starred restaurant, is never the first that springs to mind in talking about the town’s often wonderful epicurean offering.
Some might say Bastion are their own worst enemies for not doing as so many other — and often lesser — restaurants around the country do and trumpeting loudly on social media but Noonan and McDonald prefer, as the old cliché goes, to let the food do the talking on the plate. There is nothing clichéd however about McDonald’s cooking, classical French in style but with an airy lightness of touch (especially typified by a penchant for adding acidity with dairy produce) that makes for very easy eating.
It may be criminally under-sung but Bastion is a very good restaurant, Kinsale’s secret treasure just crying out for discovery by the far wider audience it deserves.
- Dinner with two tasting menus, wine, water, and coffees cost €280
- bastionkinsale.com
