Valerie O'Connor admires Pat O'Sullivan's smart, smart Café Noir
Cafe Noir, Limerick
After one year in business, Cafe Noir (owned by Pat O’Sullivan of Moll D’Arby’s) in Limerick is enjoying a thriving trade. Packed daily with lunching ladies, the staples of salads and quiches are flying out of the fridges. Pat has employed his talented pastry chef to make rustic breads – white, baguette, cheese 'n onion and an array of pretty pastries – to keep tums full and happy. There is no kitchen to speak of but a miracle style oven that cooks everything in five minutes. You can have steak and Guinness pie, good and tasty with deep red wine flavours; cheesy eggy quiche, or the most amazing lamb and pork sausage rolls from legendary butcher James McGeough.
Salads are bespoke, anything you want goes in to a big bowl and gets dressed and plated, it’s simple and it works. Soups are the speciall of the day or a French onion version, topped with puff pastry, again from the oven. Desserts are cheesecake, coffee cake and a sweet, sweet lemon meringue pie. Its a simple formula and doesn’t disappoint. You can buy the bread to take home, and a selection of locally made chutneys and juices.
Café Noir is a good looking bird, all black with a billowing canopy and tasteful outside space with lots of tables on the pavement. Pat has decorated this, his baby, in faded greens with tiles and blackboards, French style. Piaf or Bruni play quietly to the customers who simply love this place. He has put a lot into the courtyard which is nicely decked and canopied and is overlooked by a pretty church.
Robert Street
Limerick
061 411 222
Valerie O’Connor
