Café real treasure

WHEN is a café not a café?

When it’s Café Hans. This busy Tipperary treasure is the kind of place that greets you with a basket of hot bread, serves up jugs of water with ice and lemon without you having to request it, and cooks — rather than reheats — fresh food to order.

Sure, there are paper napkins, it doesn’t take bookings, and it closes at 5pm. But for all intents and purposes, this is a casual cafe with the panache of a proper restaurant.

Café Hans hails from the same family as the neighbouring Chez Hans, which opened in Cashel’s old Synod Hall way back in 1968, and briefly won a Michelin star in 1983. It is run by Stefan and Hans Matthiae, and sits like a honey trap on Moor Lane — Bridgestone plaques and geranium-splashed windows luring passers-by inside after a visit to the nearby Rock of Cashel.

L and I pitch up with our two kids (aged five and one) shortly after it opens one Saturday at 12pm. We get a table easily enough, but half an hour later, the café is full — brimming with tourists, friends, mothers and daughters. The weekend crowd is well-heeled, laid back and very willing to dip into the German, French and Italian offerings on a one-page wine list (€18 to €25.50).

I start with a Caesar salad, a nicely balanced bowl of crunchy cos lettuce, salty parmesan shavings, and tingling little pickled cucumbers and red onions. The smoked chicken is moist, integral to the dish rather than an extra chucked on top (though there’s a vegetarian version too), and the dressing is indulgent without being repeaty — a common pitfall, I find, with Caesar salads.

L orders the fish of the day, a big, fat piece of hake on a dollop of mash, doused in a thick beurre blanc riddled with chives, and criss-crossed with a few snappy beans. Sourced from Dunmore East, the fish is succulent, crisply browned and fairly priced, I think, at €16.95. The special is listed with chorizo, but it’s no problem for L, who is coeliac, to have this gluten-free alternative.

Other options included a selection of open sandwiches (including Coronation chicken, shrimp and avocado, and sirloin steak), as well as poached salmon, Rossmore mussels, and marinated Tipperary lamb chops served with beans, creamed potato and Salsa Verde.

There isn’t a children’s menu, so we order a kids’ portion of spaghetti Bolognese for ours to share. The minced beef is juicy and flavoursome, tasting like it’s gotten some TLC in the pot, and a far cry from the rubberised and oily Bolognese sauces all too common in Irish restaurants.

For dessert, we share a delightful stack of chocolate mousse. A little dry and over-beaten, it is interspersed with crackly homemade biscuits, thick cream, and laid atop a little lake of raspberry and passion fruit jus. Four spoons make short work of it.

All told, Café Hans makes a big splash with very little space, and works as a clever partner to the venerable old restaurant next door. The interiors are bright and upbeat, with Sharon Dold’s playful, ‘fat ladies’ on the place mats, fresh bread for sale by the door, and a line of pearly lights shining over the bare wooden floors and tables.

On the downside, I’d question the merits of having a waiting area right beside the toilets, and a small bowl of so-so chips was lazily priced at €3.95. We found the staff too busy to be truly attentive, but otherwise it’s well worth a detour off the M8 — providing you’re prepared to wait for a table.

One other quibble. When I went to pay our bill I was frustrated to find that Café Hans doesn’t accept plastic. I saw no signs or notes regarding the cash-only policy — the first I heard of it was at the till, just as our cranky toddler was struggling to spring himself from his high chair.

I understand that fees associated with credit and debit cards can be taxing on small businesses, but the result here is that a fine lunch ends on an annoying note, and a five-minute hike to the ATM.