Fruit of the sea

IT IS entirely appropriate that a town that ushers a river as magnificent as the Blackwater to the sea — could be, might be again one of Europe’s great salmon rivers — should have a venerable seafood restaurant.

In Youghal, Aherne’s has filled that role for generations. It will mark a century in business in a dozen years, an entirely fitting time span for an establishment that treats oysters so adroitly. This tradition was honoured last year when Aherne’s was named the Georgina Campbell Seafood Restaurant of the Year.

One of the newspaper barons of old, Lord Beaverbrook, once said the perfect newspaper was like the sea — “the same but different every day”. The crusty autocrat advocated consistency but maybe with licence to wear a different hat on different days.

And so it is in Aherne’s. The family-run restaurant and small hotel has purred away quietly, reconfirming, year after year, its place on a lot of selective go-to lists. It seems happy to watch the first push of fashion skate by and do the old, simple-but-great things well. It worked for Beaverbrook and seems to work for Aherne’s too.

We — seafood fan and colleague CO’S and I — visited on a Saturday night and enjoyed a meal selected from a reassuringly predictable menu.

CO’S started with grilled rock oysters with spinach and Hollandaise (€14.15) and I had the by-now standard prawns cooked in garlic butter (€14.50).

Both of these dishes can implode when the bit players speak their lines too loudly but here there was harmony between fish and vegetable. They were as you would hope and expect them to be in a restaurant that earned its stripes decades ago. A comforting tone, a the-journey-has-been-worth-it realisation, was set for the evening.

Neither of the main courses would have surprised anyone interested in seafood either. CO’S chose seared scallops, monkfish and prawns in a coral sauce (€30.75) and despite repeated suggestions that I might like a taste, I never got a chance — it did not last long enough. Swept away like flotsam on an ebbing tide. However, it was obvious that the fish were pert fresh and cooked with precision.

I chose a standard, a simple but benchmark dish for any mature restaurant. You won’t find grilled black sole on the bone (€30.75) in Heston Blumenthal’s or Ferran Adrià’s how-to cookbooks but the dish has been a very pleasurable regular in restaurants of a certain type for decades. And it was no different in Aherne’s.

Good, fresh fish well cooked, food of real substance but without the kind of weight that sends you exhausted to the couch for the rest of the evening.

In another legendary Beaverbrook missive the Canadian told a flustered editor that the art of editing was as much about knowing what to leave out as it was about knowing what to include. So it is with a dish like grilled sole. I’m very happy to report that Beaverbrook’s advice would have been unnecessary in Aherne’s kitchen.

Vegetables were a catchall mixture served with all main courses and should have been better in this price bracket. Potato came in the form of croquettes and was a good contrast to the texture of the fish dishes.

Desserts were simple too. I had ice cream, simple and satisfying.

CO’S had the cheese board and it was one of the better ones I’ve seen in a good while. Good cheeses with a great variety of tastes and textures and all at the right temperature. Strangely, in a region blessed with so many good cheesemakers, ordering a cheese plate is as much a gamble as not. This was not.

Our wine was a very clean and spikey Bagoa do Mino Albariño (€28) and if you like a fresh, thrusting white wine, is well worth trying.

Altogether this was a good if conservative meal — there are meat and chicken options on the menu — and far better than many of the alternatives. However, the evening was a bit more expensive than comparable meals and the fact the dining room is snug but windowless does not add to the evening’s gaiety either. Nevertheless, it would be a good choice for a save-the-sanity overnight break with good deals on dinner and bed and breakfast packages at the moment.