Not a corker

A previous visit to this restaurant was much happier

THE OTHER NIGHT we moseyed into Cork for a quick bite and ended up in Les Gourmandises. I’d been there many years ago and enjoyed it, but in the intervening years something seems to have been lost.

The two dishes from the dearer of the two menus were served on slates, an idea that was quite cutting edge back in 1986 but which frankly is a bit silly and tired at this stage. My companion said that if she wanted to eat off slates she could always just head up to the roof.

Yes, fashions are always changing but the current trend in food, for stripped-down, simple, well-sourced stuff, is particularly benign. Ireland is lagging a bit behind in this regard and there’s still a lot of fancypants stuff going on.

And so it is at Les Gourmandises. Okay, a slab of black pudding (“roasted”) on a bed of red cabbage was not exactly cheffy. In fact, it was a pretty ignorant lump of a starter, which would have been forgivable had it been bouncing with flavour and excitement. As it was, it just tasted of a cheap idea.

And much the same could be said of the ham hock, which had been deconstructed and the strands of meat seasoned and formed into a timbale.

This was served with a chunk of fondant potato and a dark brown juswhich seemed a little out of place. It just struck me as being rather dull, despite the smears of apple and celeriac purees. And shockingly dear at €25.50 for two courses.

Chefs love luxury ingredients and many of them are suffering painful withdrawal symptoms at the moment, as budget menus hold sway. Here at Les Gourmandises, on the dearer menu, you can have foie gras “hot and cold” but for a supplement of a fiver (which makes a bit of a mockery of a €35 two-course set-price menu, I would have thought).

The extra money buys you a bit of elegance of a sort. The slice of hot foie gras was impeccably cooked and looked as if it had been attended by a food stylist. The plug of foie gras pate which came encased in an apple and cider jelly looked almost as good, and the very finely sliced, blanched celeriac was geometrically perfect.

A main course of sea bream was as perfectly cooked as that slice of foie gras and was served, once again, on a slate. It was a very small piece of fish and – I know this is hard to imagine – it came surrounded by a scattering of tomato and sage risotto, tiny potato croquettes and a dollop of pickled aubergine puree. Put it like this: the sage won.

With three glasses of wine and a bottle of Evian, the bill came to €101 by the time we had added a tenner for service. We were asked, when ordering, if we would like extra potato with our main courses. Further evidence that we are a nation obsessed with this starchy tuber.

tdoorley@irishtimes.com

Read Megabites, Tom Doorley’s blog on all things foodie at irishtimes.com/blogs/megabites