Kennedy's Food Store in Fairview

Out in deepest Fairview, Sarah Kennedy is doing the Good Thing. Leslie Williams catches up with the Fairest of Fairview, a shop/deli/restaurant that every neighborhood should have at the centre of its culinary culture.

Kennedy's Food Store in Fairview is the kind of food shop/deli/cafe which planners should require builders and developers to provide along with schools and libraries in new housing estates. Every community needs a place to go for home made brown bread for breakfast, sandwiches and home made soup at lunchtime and maybe a cheap meal and a glass of wine when you come home from the office wrecked at 8pm and can't face the kitchen - oh and the meal should cost around a tenner.

Kennedy's does all this and you can also pick up some decent chocolate and a bottle of wine to guzzle in front of the TV when you get home. Almost all the food is home cooked and that which is not is sourced well from the likes of Maison des Gourmets for bread and ham from Hicks. All food served is cooked from first principles using essentially the same principles as you would use at home. Eggs and chickens are free range and the ham and beef for sandwiches is cooked on the premises.

The dinner special on the evening I visited was Lasagne, Salad and a glass of wine for 9.95 but I opted for the Pork and Leek Sausages in a Lyonnaise sauce with roast potatoes (9.95) and a glass of Hungarian Bulls Blood. This was simple fare but tasty nonetheless with good quality sausages from Morrisseys of Wexford Street. For dessert I had a slice of triple layered chocolate cake that was a little dryer than I would have liked but the ample layers of chocolate ganache filling more than compensated. Add a cup of Americano coffee and a bar of Green and Blacks to eat on the way home and the bill came to a very reasonable €21.35.

So lets get lobbying to have the planning laws changed so we can all get a place like this near us!

Kennedy's Food Store
5 Fairview Strand, Dublin 3
Tel: 01 833 1400
Web: www.kennedysfoodstore.com
Opening Times: Mon-Fri: 7.30am-9pm, Sat- 9am-6pm, Sun- 10am-4pm

Tell us about your favourite local deli heaven.

"The Creators" Individuals of Irish Food by Dianne Curtin

Dianne Curtin's first book could be described simply as a series of pen portraits accompanied by superb photographic portraits of some of the major players in Cork's rich artisan food culture.

In fact the book is much more than this, and is the story of a series of producers whose work has helped the author to see creative food culture in a new and richer light. The Creators is a mixture of love letter and tone poem about a group of dogged determined individuals whose work has come to be of supreme importance in our food culture. Ms Curtin captures the nuances of personality of these people with deftness and Philip Curtin's photography, in a typically beautifully produced book by Cork University Press, includes some photographs that are nothing less than transcendent.

Atrium €29.95
Published 1 November 2007

Menu of the Season: The Waterfront Restaurant

The Waterfront Restaurant, Lord Bagenal Hotel, Main Street, Leighlinbridge, Co Carlow

This menu from The Waterfront was one of the most memorable meals of our restaurant-going year. It all started with an amuse of air-dried Connemara lamb with lavender honey…

Starter
Fillet of Red MulletChickpea fries, Lemon & Basil Tartar Sauce €13.50
Pressed terrine of Confit Duck & Foie grasApricot Compote, Warm Brioche €13.50
Roast Breast of QuailWild Mushroom Risotto, Salsify Crisps €14.00
Graden Herb SaladPassion Fruit Jelly and Asparagus €13.50
Mosaic of Ham Hock & ChorizoWith Watermelon & Avocado Purée €13.50
Pan Fried ScallopsWith home-made Crubeen Pudding, Apple & Fennel Salad €16.00
Carpaccio of Hereford BeefHorseradish Ice Cream and Beetroot Pickle €15.00
Pan-Fried Sa TroutWith Sweet Potato and Lemongrass Soup €13.50

Main Course
Fillet of Hereford BeefRosti Potato, Carrot Puree & Foie Gras Cromesquis & Orange€32.00
Caramelized Black SoleWith Mussels, Fresh Linguini & Asparagus Puree, Wild Mushrooms €30.00
Roast Breast of Free Range ChickenMoroccan spiced pine nut Cous Cous, home made Date Chutney & Tagine Sauce €28.00
Pan Fried CodCrab & Ginger Tortellini, Roast Shellfish Sauce and Deep Fried Celery Leaf €28.00
Sweetcorn RavioliCauliflower Beignet, Braised Onion & Curry Froth & Caramel €24.00
Butter Roast Strip of VealSmoked Gubbeen & potato gratin, creamed peas & bacon, béarnaise sauce €30
Pan Roasted John DoryBasil Crushed Potatoes, Confit Plum tomatoes & Tapenade Beurre Blanc €29.50
Rump of LambBroad Beans & Mint, Colcannon Potato & Violet Mustard €28.00

Dessert
Bonbon Fuille De BrickFrangepan Mousseline, Caramel Ice Cream & Crème Anglaise
Dragon FruitsPistachio Avocado Mousse
Delice of Poached PearsCaramel Sauce, Kiwi Sorbet
Dark Chocolate FondantMilk Chocolate Sauce, Strawberry Sorbet & Sherry Syrup
Sensation Trio of Fruit MoussesCoconut Passion fruit Cráeme Brulee and Mint Ginger Sorbet
Rhubarb Crème BruleeVanilla Tuille
Cheese BoardSelection of Irish & French Cheese
Selection of SorbetPineapple, Mango & Mandarin

Eamon's Bridgestone Diary: On The Road

Saturday May 19th
After work we head for Richmond House in Cappoquin, one of our favourite places for a 'Dinner & Duvet' stay over. It's a lovely evening and the grounds are very restful. Since we're a little earlier than usual we bring a bottle of wine down to the conservatory and read the Saturday papers. Dinner is wonderful, as always, and service is efficient, gracious and very, very friendly.

Sunday May 20th
Home from Cappaquin it's off to Dunbrody Abbey Cookery Centre where Pierce & Valerie McAuliffe are hosting a Slow Food event. On a stunningly sunny day we spend the afternoon in their courtyard garden, meeting new people (check out Pierre and Ursula's new wine company at www.auserviceduvin.ie ), learning about the Wexford Organic Centre at Cushinstown, New Ross and tasting the great Tom Cleary's homemade sloe gin. On the way home we pop in to Roger & Terrie Pooley at Parkswood House in Passage East to ask whether they might host a Slow Food event.

Thursday May 24th
It's Election Day. We head to In A Nutshell in New Ross for lunch and then on to check out the Wexford Organic Centre outside New Ross. It's a low-key place but we are mighty impressed when our request for some mixed leaves and some rocket results in them being cut from the ground in front of us and bagged up. On the way home we call in to Tom Kearney's butchers in John St. Waterford and pick up some beef fillet. Using a recipe from Food & Wine magazine the beef is just seared on the pan, then cut really thinly and stuffed with the rocket leaves. Served with the salad leaves and some cherry tomatoes, it was delicious.

Monday May 28th
We drive out to Annestown to visit the little bistro at the Copper Coast Geopark centre. We limited ourselves to coffee with scones and jam but those scones were still warm from the oven, light as a feather, the coffee served in generous sized cafetieres. Prices are amazingly low.

Tuesday May 29th
After work we head for Flahavan's Oat mills in Kilmacthomas where Slow Food have arranged a tour of the facility. It's a really impressive place, certified organic, sourcing it's raw ingredient mostly from farmers within 30 miles of the factory. Some of the electricity for the place is generated from the original old millstream and the heating by burning off the waste husks from the oats in a boiler. John and Mary Flahavan were generous hosts. Porridge will never seem such a simple product again!

Thursday May 30th
On a trip through Bennettsbridge in Kilkenny we grab a quick lunch at the reliable café at the Nicholas Mosse pottery. Pork terrine with salad for me, goat's cheese and red onion tart for J. That night we head to my old school - De La Salle College - to catch the end of year student concert. Amazing musical talent on display.

Friday June 1st
Lunch at the Granary Café at Waterford Treasures Museum where I meet up with chef Martin Dwyer and Donal Lehane, convivium leader of the Four Rivers Slow Food group, to plan a Slow Food event for September.

Saturday June 2nd
Dinner at a restaurant that has to remain nameless. Foie gras with stewed rhubarb was not a match made in heaven. Lamb terrine was tasteless and a dessert of chocolate brownie with chocolate mousse served on a pile of chopped mango was dry and unsatisfying. Service was overpowering at the beginning of the evening and almost non-existent by the end. The bill was almost €150.00 with just two glasses of wine.

Sunday June 3rd
Dinner at Bassetts restaurant in Inistioge. From a really strong start this restaurant has just gotten better and better. The tasting menu now only takes place on Saturday evenings and the restaurant now rears its own pigs; you won't miss them out front. We had a super dinner and somehow managed to get back in the car without taking a little piglet home as a pet. Back home I finish off the last drop of sloe gin from a bottle that Martin Dwyer gave me.

Thursday June 7th
Over the years we have often undertaken long journeys in pursuit of good food. Today we leave Waterford on what will be a 600km round trip to visit Neven Maguire's MacNean House in Blacklion, Co. Cavan. Despite the fact that our car gave up the ghost just 100 yards short of the restaurant and had to make the journey back to Waterford on the back of an AA truck, we loved the restaurant and our - amazingly good value - room. Staff were really friendly and Neven Maguire seems to work incredibly hard; he's there for breakfast from first thing in the morning and he's there in the evening as we head for bed.

Friday June 8th
Having picked up a rental car in Cavan we head to Sligo. After a little retail therapy we end up in the amazing Kate's Kitchen on Castle St., an extraordinary shop. If we weren't so far from home we'd have brought a heap of things home with us. Back in MacNean House that night, the menu has changed completely since yesterday and the food has moved up to an even higher gear.

Throughout our two-night stay, the staff have been amongst the best we have encountered. In the guest book we wrote that it had been worth every one of the 600km!

Phew!

We come to bury Chicken Caesar

Believe it or believe it not, but I have sitting on my desk a menu from a popular Irish restaurant which offers its customers "Classic Chicken Caesar salad".

I'm not making this up. We are living in an age when Irish chefs think Caesar Salad comes with chicken.

The same guys who have desecrated Caesar Cardini's classic creation, however, tend to be less inventive and rather more derivative when it comes to the rest of their menus.

The Chicken Caesars, these Emperors of invention, offer these things on their menus: Confit belly of pork. Braised shank of lamb with root vegetables. Dry Aged Rib-eye steak with béarnaise and chips. Bangers and mash with onion gravy. Warm salad of goat's cheese. Hamburger with crispy onion rings and potato wedges. Battered cod with pea purée. Bailey's parfait. Panacotta.

We live in a universe of untold diversity. But you sure wouldn't think it if you were eating in Irish restaurants.

Time and again, the new warhorses, the new prawn cocktail-sirloin steak/black forest gateau clichés are wheeled out in every county of the country. You could travel the length and breadth of Ireland and eat nothing but battered cod with peas and shank of lamb and risotto with mushrooms and crème brulee. What on earth is going wrong?

I mean, if you are going to copy someone, for Heaven's sake make it Seamus O'Connell - tea smoked duck with Earl Grey gravy; wild Irish salmon with carrot crust and grapefruit sauce were two things Seamus had on the menu at Parknasilla during the season - or Denis Cotter - beetroot mouse with orange-scented yogurt, watercress and fennel crispbreads - or George Kehoe of Carlow's Waterfront Restaurant - carpaccio of Hereford beef with horseradish ice cream and beetroot pickle - or Seamus McDonald of Kerry's Out Of The Blue, who created a stunning dish of turbot cutlet with its own foie gras and with the roe of the fish smoked and then stuffed into morels. A violet mustard sauce completed a stunning creation, and one that used every bit of the fish.

Why not copy the best, in other words? Why not plagiarise those who are worth plagiarising? Why copy those who think that adding chicken to a Caesar salad somehow makes it "Classic".
So, let's ditch the clichés, and let's have a new template of things that are Worth Copying: Niall McKenna's lobster salad with tomato ceviche; Alden's haunch of rabbit with cabbage, pine nuts and currants; Danny Millar's rump of Finnebrogue venison with boxty and Bushmills; Aine Maguire's bacon collar with parsley sauce and organic cabbage.

So, tell us the dish which you have most enjoyed in an Irish restaurant, and suggestions for any other "classics" that should be deemed forbidden.

Leslie Williams sprinkles the salt and calls for the mustard: Steak Frites

Steak Frites is the quintessential French Bistro dish. Whenever I am in France this is the dish I order more than any other as I can be fairly certain they will get it right - or at least less wrong. The chips might be cooked from frozen and the steak underdone (to some Irish palates) but I have come to trust in the simplicity of this dish.

First let me tell you what steak frites is not. It is not tender but tasteless fillet steak with a tournedos sauce (the reason fillet always has a rich sauce is because it is usually tasteless on its own), and the frites are thin and crispy - they are never, ever, ever, wedges of undercooked soggy potato.

The best steak frites is made with a cheap cut such as rib-eye, rump or onglet cooked rare or blue. If you like your steak well done you need to order a better cut as these cuts will not work.
The chewy texture and meaty flavours from the cheaper cuts are essential to match the crispy fluffy chips. Sirloin is just about acceptable and maybe Striploin but the chips had better be damn good.

In France ask for "à point" for what we call medium rare or saignant as the French do. A word of warning - you wont be taken seriously as a diner in France unless you ask for saignant which will only cook the outside leaving most of the proteins un-connected (OK I admit it - raw!). Once you try it a few times you wont want your steak frites any other way.

Sadly many restaurant customers do not understand this and I know that Venu were forced within six months to change their cut (and increase the price) as customers reported their steak as "chewy". Telling customers "it's supposed to be that way!" is sadly not an option in Ireland (as it would be in France!).

Now the frites - this may sound like sacrilege, but give me frozen crispy chips over the abomination that are "home-cooked chips" or "hand-cut chips" which turn out to be little more than soapy wedges of undercooked potato - all too prevalent in restaurants of all price ranges in Dublin and elsewhere.

The problem with freshly prepared thin crispy chips is time. Bistros survive on rapid turnover and many believe they just don't have the time to first blanch their chips in 140C oil, cool them down, and then cook from cold at 180C - as they do in Alexis in Dun Laoghaire (who use maris piper).

Personally I don't see what the problem is - if Alexis can do it and just charge €22.50 for sublime steak and the crispiest of chips why cant everyone else?

Locks use Spanish potatoes, blanch their chips three times in oil before the final frying and these are also out of this world good. Blanching three times probably a little over the top but it really does work so I am not complaining. Balzac cooks a fine steak frites and unashamedly uses frozen chips and I applaud them for this, particularly as they have outstanding duck fat potatoes also on the menu - a reason for visiting on their own.

Venu has tried fresh cut chips (cut raw early in the day - pretty good), frozen chips (not bad) and have finally settled on the blanching and re-frying method (excellent). Currently my sources tell me they are experimenting with oils and have a "secret ingredient" which they believe will give them "the best chips in the city". Truly a worthy ambition and something for which I wish others would strive.

If you are in Paris the best steak frites I have had was at Le Gavroche on Rue St. Marc, a tiny old school bistro in the 2nd Arr - the best frites in Paris according to Figaro and truly excellent they are; (whisper it though, the ones in Locks and Alexis are better.)

In New York visit Les Halles on Park Avenue which I still believe was the best steak frites I have ever experienced. At home use Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook which tells you all you need to know about the dish.

As Disreli said "It was not reason that besieged Troy; it was not reason that sent forth the Saracen from the desert to conquer the world… above all, it was not reason that created the French Revolution. Man is only great when he acts from the passions; never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination."

So rise with me as customers of the restaurants of Ireland to stay the encroaching tide of wedges, and let us demand frites.

Who, in your opinion, makes the best steak frites?

Questions for the Bridgestone Guides

Can't find a place that someone somewhere recommended? Lost touch with a place you used to visit? If you have any questions about the good people in Irish food then ask the Bridgestone Guides. And, if we can't help you one of our readers/bloggers might be able to.