Restaurant review: Kelly's is a nostalgic taste of fast fading delights in Cork
Entering Kelly's made me step back in time. One minute I was strolling through sun-blasted and cosmopolitan 21st-century Cork city, the next minute I was in an upstairs restaurant I last visited a full half-century ago
Kelly’s Restaurant on Oliver Plunkett Street in Cork City: Picture: Chani Anderson
A former chef, Joe McNamee is Senior Food Writer at the Irish Examiner. Holding a BA in Culinary Arts, he writes about food and reviews restaurants for Weekend.
Kelly’s Restaurant
64 Oliver Plunkett St, Cork
Our rating: 7.5/10
To ‘step back in time’ is a hackneyed old expression, wrung out and meaningless through overuse, lazy shorthand for nostalgia or whatever tickles the latest retro fancy. Today, however, I actually stepped back in time. One minute I was strolling through sun-blasted and cosmopolitan 21st-century Cork city, the next minute I was in an upstairs restaurant I last visited a full half-century ago. The transition hit me with the class of emotional jolt I can only presume is a common side-effect of time travel.
Back then, attending a city centre school, I would come with a friend during lunchtime. He came from a well-off family and liked to share the wealth, particularly from his mother’s purse, though she was neither privy to nor informed of this largesse.
Every day, we shared a single dish. French fries. Not chips, French fries, as common as caviar in 1970s Cork. We’d never tasted the like. Somedays, we’d share a second plate, depending on maternal security arrangements. He was eventually busted and sentenced to a far stricter school. I never again returned to Kelly’s until this week. In my time machine, of course.
In 1971, one Tom Kelly opened Kelly’s restaurant upstairs at No 64 Oliver Plunkett St. In 1989, he sold it to the Daly family, who kept the name and have been there ever since.
A high-ceilinged room and soaring sash windows add louche grace to a fading decor of a bygone era. One wall sports faux exposed red brick wallpaper. From the ceiling hangs a large tricolour. It’s not unlike your Republican granny’s good front room, preserved in amber.
The menu is like the great carvery revival: the roasts, turkey (with ham), chicken and beef; fish and chips for Fridays. Four courses for €24.
The Gambler, whose parents came of country stock and is not above dinner in the middle of the day, orders the grilled pork chop. Unlike him, I first break my fast at lunch time, only building up to dinner after sundown. A true pro, I unbuckle my belt and order corned beef and cabbage.
Kelly’s Restaurant on Oliver Plunkett Street in Cork City: Picture: Chani Anderson
First though, soup, dense, thick vegetable puree of the old school, pleasing with brown bread. An attractively browned grilled chop looks the part but is ‘well-cooked’ as was once the fashion and still is in Kelly’s. Anyway, good flavours compensate and he leaves nothing but the bone.
My meltingly delicious and tender corned beef, proper silverside, is so good I wonder if I’ve found my new breakfast. On the side, mixed veg (carrots, cauliflower, green beans), again (over-) cooked in old school fashion, have lost flavour and texture but I’m happy with my cabbage and potato, mashed and steamed, all topped with too much butter, English mustard and viscous dark gravy from a stainless steel gravy boat.
The only real disappointment is watery rice pudding for dessert, none of the dense sugary cream that comes from prolonged baking in the oven, caramelising milk’s lactose sugars. The Gambler’s apple crumble with custard could also use a bit more TLC but we both clear our bowls, whipped cream and raspberry syrup adding heft to my rice.
It is by observing fellow diners that you divine the true magic of Kelly’s. Save a family of Spanish tourists, all are older than us and we’re no spring chickens. The Spaniards hover between bemusement and amusement at their surroundings, but vanquish with obvious relish their four courses faster than anyone else in the room.
Several female family groups are restoring themselves after a morning’s shopping but the cohort most in evidence are solo male diners well into their pension years, scattered around the room at individual tables.
Most restaurants that stay the course for a few years accumulate dining ‘regulars’. Kelly’s ‘regulars’ are of a different order entirely: weekly, even daily, customers, many of them, single older men who have traded their kitchen tables for a seat at Kelly’s. The food is the same familiar comfort blanket stuff they were reared on and staff treat them like family many no longer have. If one doesn’t show up for a few days, staff text or phone to see if they’re OK.
Kelly’s Restaurant on Oliver Plunkett Street in Cork City: Picture: Chani Anderson
They may dine alone but fall into easy conversation across the room, sometimes joining each other if the conversation grows legs. We even meet a fondly remembered old teacher on our way out who proudly informs us he is on the cusp of 80.
While food offering is crucial to the success of any restaurant, it is social interaction that ices the multi-layered cake of hospitality. Judging Kelly’s from that standpoint alone, the warmth of the welcome, the obvious and genuine care for their clientele, Kelly’s might well be the best restaurant in Ireland.
And if you’re in the market for a nostalgic taste of a culinary Ireland fast fading from view, then my prescription is dinner in the middle of the day, specifically a plate of their corned beef and cabbage. Time travellers, step this way.
