Worth missing a train for

EATING OUT:The countryside air seems to be doing Conrad Gallagher's cooking a power of good

‘I’VE NEVER LEFT FOR lunch at eight o’clock in the morning before,” says my mother as we trundle along deserted Saturday morning Dublin streets. We miss a Luas, jump in a taxi to the station, and collapse gratefully into train seats, a pile of papers and a three-hour journey ahead. It’s all a bit of a gamble. A chef with a dented reputation is at the helm in a kitchen on the other side of the country. By the time we traipse up past the brass-plate buildings of Sligo’s Wine Street, the odyssey has made us hungry. This could all go horribly wrong.

We have come to the Model Arts Centre in Sligo to find out what Conrad Gallagher does with a blank canvas and a chance to leave his baggage behind in the big smoke. Like his Dublin restaurant, it’s cash or cheque only.

Gallery restaurants tend to be afterthoughts, shoe-horned into dark spaces, with the wide airy ones kept for the art. Not here. The Model sits on a hill above the town with a view of Ben Bulben out to one side. It’s a handsome and austere Victorian limestone building with a modern extension. Conrad’s Kitchen is in the front of the old building, through the front door. If you are not here to dine, you are directed to the arts centre entrance around the back.

Artist Duncan Campbell's film Make It New Johnabout the ill-fated DeLorean factory is the centre's current main exhibition. Interviews show a dead-eyed John DeLorean spoofing his way through one of the biggest failures in manufacturing history. I wonder if Gallagher has watched it.

And so to lunch. We go into the restaurant from the gallery space and get a nice table in the corner by the window. The tables are set simply with gleaming glassware and cutlery, a cut white rose in a tealight holder in the middle. This is very close to perfect. The only problem is the place is empty. Four more people arrive over the next two hours, but the staff outnumbers diners throughout.

The wine menu is simple, five options each arranged under price headings. The set price lunch menu is also simple: six starters, six mains, six desserts, and a chocolate and coffee option.

After some good bread, particularly a yummy apricot curried bread fresh out of the oven, comes an amuse-bouche served on tiny white porcelain plates. It’s a rectangle of fresh salmon with a sprinkling of dill on top with tiny matchsticks of raw radish. Its cheffy and fussy, like nothing you would ever try at home, and it’s utterly delicious.

The starters arrive promptly. My pumpkin soup with a lone roasted scallop comes with a light froth on the top, the scallop served on a tiny plate beside it. The soup makes me smile after nearly every spoonful – the subtle flavour of pumpkin is warmed up with green-gold beads of olive oil. The creamy scallop is a perfect partner. Mum’s smiling too. Her crab wrapped in kataifi (think Shredded Wheat stretched into a tower) is delicious, and she is not a fish fan. There are dots of saffron aioli around the bowl and a basque pepper stew at the bottom is sweet and smoky.

For the main course, I have ordered a lamb shank shepherd’s pie and Mum’s having the daube of beef. The South African Swallow’s Tail Shiraz/Cabernet Sauvignon (€24) we ordered is a meaty red to go with this wintry food. Her beef has been slow-cooked in wine until the meat has cooked down to an almost-black piece of wine-enhanced velvet-soft beef. My lamb shank is tasty but too salty. It comes with a green toothpaste-tube-shaped piping of basil mash around the top, and semi-sundried cherry tomato halves to cut the fatty meatiness of it all with a tomato tang. The tomatoes are great and the dish could do with a few more. My vegetables, small carrots and spring onions, have been steamed and then bathed in butter and arranged like folded umbrellas sticking up out of an egg-cup sized bowl.

“It’s worth coming the distance for,” Mum says. There is a longish delay waiting for dessert, and our Irish Rail deadline, which seemed generous, suddenly starts to tick. She has an apple crumble with chunks of just-softened apple coated in cinnamon and pistachio with a yummy ice cream. I have a chocolate mousse with olive oil ice cream. The mousse is thick and milky with catalogue-perfect raspberries perched on top. The olive oil ice cream is superb.

By now I am downing a coffee in gulps. We call for the bill and head down the hill. We have mother and daughter history in this town. I was born here and, on the way back, Mum remembers the long-gone great food shop where she used to buy the Christmas ham. We have been optimistic about the time it takes to get to the station and I sprint the last stretch just in time to see the flag waving our train off.

There’s a bus station and Mum’s free travel pass works there too. Unfortunately the driver of our bus has never driven the route before. It’s a journey scripted by Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews. “The next stop is . . . ” the woman’s recorded voice says. “Well, she knows where she’s going anyway,” the bus driver remarks cheerily. At one point we do a U-turn. At a junction in Mullingar the driver turns in his seat with a grin and asks: “Anyone? Any ideas?”

It’s testament to the food (and the unaccustomed lunchtime drinking) that this was a lunch worth missing a train for. Conrad Gallagher is cooking cheffy things well, using small portions of good food to keep prices down. He is in a building that was set up as a model school. A first school report? Seems to have have learned some lessons. Keep up the good work.

The set three-course lunch for two was €23.95 each, with coffee and wine it came to €74.60.

CONRAD’S KITCHEN

The Model Arts Centre,Sligo, 071-9119400

MUSIC: Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli playing French jazz

FACILITIES: Nicely designed minimalism

WHEELCHAIR ACCESS: Yes

FOOD PROVENANCE: Not given. When I ask where the quail comes from, the answer comes back that it has flown away and been replaced by Irish baby chicken