Cozy Kitchen

IF EVER the Sheela Na Gigs at Timoleague abbey decide that passivity is getting them nowhere, that being a wallflower for the bones of a millennium is enough, they won’t have far to go to celebrate their liberation with a lovely meal in a lovely place.

Dillon’s of Timoleague is a small, pretty restaurant with a very welcoming atmosphere and excellent food. Set in an old country shop/bar all of the important, defining features remain. Robust wooden counters and shelves marry with simple but very strong tiling, in the kind of colour combinations so powerful you don’t even realise the impact they have on your mood until you’ve been cheered up. All bathed in the lovely light only big, shop-window prisms can pour into any room.

Two apéritifs continued the jolly-up process. Apéritifs don’t often warrant a mention but my partner’s — DW — was so lovely, so simple that it almost justified the journey to the meandering Arigideen.

It was a homemade elderflower cordial emboldened with alcoholic fizz and was refreshingly clean and as near perfect a first act as you could wish for. If you rush you might just catch the last of this year’s elderflowers and make your own, it’s simple and so rewarding. I had the simplest and the best apéritif there is — a pint of good porter.

DW continued with confit of duck with apple jelly, chick pea and olive purée. It was really good and the simple, time-proven combination of duck and apple, a mainstay of old-fashioned game cookery, proved why it is such a reliable partnership.

My starter was the weak link in the evening. The grilled oysters with lemon and basil butter did not meet the standards of the house. The butter overpowered any taste the oyster might have had and neutralised the punch of the shellfish — which is, after all, the raison d’etre of oysters.

Three of the six main courses were fish, too. DW opted for one and what a good choice it proved. It was a fine plate of grilled brill with roast fennel (from the garden) ginger scented chard, mussel and white wine broth.

Brill seems to be one of those unloved fish, always in the shadow of some fish-of-the-moment or other, maybe something like seabass. Though why it’s called seabass is a mystery, there is no other kind on this side of the Atlantic.

Choosing a fish dish today is burdened with so many conservation and ethical questions. But not here. Each dish was based on local fish supplied by local fishmongers so there’s no need to worry about that.

My main course was a celebration of lamb. Described as a trio of West Cork lamb it consisted of roast rack chops, braised shank and a minty lamb pastie with creamy champ in its own jus. These epiphanies to a single medium don’t always work but this did splendidly. Succulent chops, doughty shank and a little zing of mint to round it off. All lovely, one taste, one texture teasing the other. A real should-do for lamb-salivating carnivores.

Desserts were a lovely bowl of panna cotta and strawberries — soaked in booze — and a first class pavlova, all fresh, bouncy fruit, cardiac-surgery cream and a crunchy sugar hit.

The wine veered a tad towards expensive (€42.00) for a regular Saturday night assignation but it was worth it. If you have the merest excuse to celebrate, use it to try Grapillon D’or Gigondas. It comes from one of those low-output vineyards and is a combination primarily of grenache and then some syrah. It works very well.

John and Julie Finn run one of the very nicest restaurants in West Cork and even if on the night you go, the Sheela Na Gigs are not there clinking glasses of elderflower cordial reminiscing about the 1612 sacking of their abbey — “Mary, do you remember the small, warty fella with the red beard and the huge axe?” — you’ll have a grand night, an evening of lovely food and company.