EATING OUT: Tom Doorley takes a trip to Tipp.
The big quandary for anyone visiting Nenagh - if they have any kind of interest in food - concerns the order in which to do it. Do you head straight for Country Choice, have lunch, stock up on goodies, drive out to Lough Derg, have a long walk and then return to Gleeson's tearoom and bakery? Or do you go to Gleeson's for early elevenses and do the rest in reverse order?
It's not easy, especially if you live far enough away from this bustling Tipperary town to mean that your tastebud tour requires forward planning. Happy are those who can simply drop in as the humour takes them.
Gleeson's has changed little since the 1950s. They produce the whole gamut of traditional baking. In the small tearoom which adjoins the shop you can enjoy whatever takes your fancy with a pot of hot tea. It is still a great meeting place and there's a whiff of nostalgia for anyone who is old enough to have even the faintest memory of Fuller's and FM's in Dublin. Long may it prosper, and I hope that Eileen Gleeson's concerns about the health of the 40-year-old oven proves unfounded. "If that goes," she says, "I don't know what we'll do ..." The message is simple. Make a beeline for Gleeson's as soon as you can.
Peter and Mary Ward's Country Choice is legendary in a different way. I don't think there's a deli in the country that comes even close. Apart from the vast range of homemade jams and marmalades (20,000 pots annually), the homecooked meats, country butter, specially imported olive oils and rarities such as smoked Spanish paprika, there is a small restaurant area which does a roaring lunchtime trade.
Anyone who regularly despairs of finding real food, much of it local, at down-to-earth prices will rejoice when they eat here. And, as it happens, the wines are keenly-priced too. The shop carries a range of off-beat stuff from small producers, all of them unerringly chosen by the teetotal Peter Ward. Most days, Peter will be promoting a particular wine, charging a minuscule €3 a glass. It works; few punters leave without buying a bottle. Alternatively, you can choose your own bottle, pay the retail price and corkage of a fiver. This probably makes Country Choice the cheapest place in the country to drink decent wine with your lunch.
And, speaking of lunch, I probably overdid it. A big bowl of creamy, buttery chowder was densely packed with chunks of wild salmon and meaty ling and served with slabs of glorious brown soda bread. With a glass of Provençale rosé (on promotion on the day) and an Illy espresso, this would feed you very thoroughly, and leave some change out of €12.
But I forged on. A tart of goats' cheese with olives and semi-sundried tomatoes (very much of the moment) was unctuous and rich, a perfect partner for the remainder of the glass of dry, crisp rosé. It came with local, organically grown salad which had arrived that very morning.
It was impossible to resist a side order of wild field mushrooms, simmered with a little olive oil until they yielded lots of juice as black as squid ink. "You know they're the real thing," commented Peter, "because they get a bit grittier as you go down." A French family had each eaten a whole bowlful with brown bread and claimed that it was the best thing they had eaten on their holiday. If they sought to repeat this experience of a plentiful wild Irish delicacy elsewhere in the country, I suspect they were disappointed.
A slice of moist, almondy, flavour-packed frangipane tart with pear was as good as the deliciously sloppy gooseberry mousse that accompanied it. Fresh local gooseberries have a narrow window of opportunity for eating and it is typical of Country Choice that such a seasonal offering should be showcased like this. The bill came to a little over €20 but there was enough to feed two hungry people.
Country Choice, 25 Kenyon Street, Nenagh, Co Tipperary, 067-32596; Gleeson's Bakery and Tearoom, 37-38 Mitchell Street, Nenagh, Co Tipperary, 067-31518
WINE CHOICE: There is always a wine at €3 a glass, or you can choose a bottle from the shelves and pay €5 to drink it with lunch. There are two stonkingly good rosés, the salmon-coloured and dryly stylish Château Vierant from Provençe at €12.89, and the fruitier Commanderie de Preissan from the Pays d'Oc at €9.99. A charmer for summer drinking is Morgon Les Charmes Desvignes at €16.89, fragrant old-fashioned Beaujolais with real backbone. Champagne Veuve Foury Grande Reserve at €29.99, biodynamically produced, knocks spots off the grandes marques.