High fidelity pleasure
For some it’s a day-dreaming respite in the working day, a sarnie-in-a-coma washed down with some paper-cup coffee too hard to enjoy, or maybe one of those multi-course nothings at a Chinese restaurant.
Still more sift through little piles of seeds and nuts and wash them down with water spiked with a dash of lemon juice concluding, only on a gala occasion, with an over-ripe banana.
For the lucky few it’s a languid, civilised few hours nibbling, sipping, picking, gossiping, bickering, flirting and barely caring as the rest of the world makes the best they can of their lot.
And then, somewhere sweating in the past, there’s Jackie Healy Rae. For him it’s a national litmus test. His plain people of Ireland don’t do lunch because lunchtime is dinnertime. What a wonderful mix we are.
Most of us flit between these, and when I get a chance to enjoy the civilised, languid kind of lunch, Nash 19, on Cork’s Princes Street, is one of my default destinations.
Over the last two decades this busy restaurant has established itself as one of the very best, busiest places to eat lunch in Cork’s city centre.
It would be wrong to describe Nash 19 food as simple — it’s not by any means — but in today’s terms it’s most uncheffy and uncomplicated. There’s no food-bling or posing. It, in the best possible sense, observes the fidelity of the food business and the food contract.
Claire Nash has celebrated good local food producers and cooking for years and this is invariably justified at the table.
We — BK and I — enjoyed the consequences of those expensive principles.
We started with tiny cups of creamy, free-range chicken soup and, as a calming statement of intent, it could not have been better. Rich, delicate and oozing with character it was a perfectly understated call to arms.
BK continued with a green salad that impressed her, especially as it seemed little more than a bowl of leaves and some oil. Of course it was much more, but there’s the mystery of the thing.
My main course was grilled Union Hall cod with crab and saffron butter (€16.30) and it was excellent, succulent, fresh, perfectly cooked and more than ample.
BK, being of a curious disposition, chose the Good Food Ireland Producers’ Plate (€14.50) This was a “tapas-style plate showcasing the producers of Good Food Ireland”. And so it did — splendidly.
Slivers of duck waist-coated by the sweetest fat, smoked salmon and gravlax pert enough to stand to attention, a corner of seared swordfish crispy and soft, some black pudding and a few cheeses as rich as the pastures that produced them — not to mention marvellous smoked beef — made as compelling an argument for the Irish food industry as you will find anywhere.
In the dinnertime-at-lunchtime sense of things this tasting plate might not be for everyone, but as an exploring, eating experience it was lovely. After all it is a celebration of the best this part of the world has to offer and in that context it was a joy.
If you’d prefer something more conventionally comforting there are plenty of options — lamb shanks with Provencal stew, rib eye of beef with roasted shallots or roast belly of pork with plums, anyone?
All of this was sent on its way with the help of two glasses of a lovely, cheering Lugana, Ca dei Frati 2010.
The clock and sated appetites made desserts impossible, but experience confirms that they are as wonderful as anything produced in Nash 19 — as are all of the To Go Supper meals available in the food shop.
A lunch as lovely as this can put your day in context, and in these rushed, broken times it is nearly the perfect act of defiance.
At the recent celebration of Nash 19’s 19 years in business, a place of honour was given to Ballymaloe’s Myrtle Allen, who Claire Nash described as one of the “inspirational figures” in her career. If all of her pupils produce food as fine as this — and create as many jobs — then she can indeed take a bow.
