Weekend in the country

Bar food in a tiger tavern disappoints but an early bird at Avenue Café is more up our cash-strapped street, writes CATHERINE CLEARY

THE FAKE ORANGE light beneath a pile of cold logs in the roasting hearth should have given us a clue. We’ve arrived at the Kitchen Bar at Carton House to have a casual bite. The menu looks promising. I’ve never met a piece of goats’ cheese I didn’t like and here it’s described as being infused with rosemary.

So much recent history is housed at Carton House just outside Maynooth in Co Kildare. It’s the quintessential big house which became a tiger tavern in a joint-venture with Paddy Kelly’s property empire. The obligatory spa, two golf courses and holiday homes dropped from the sky on to the estate. And in true tax-break towers-style, a vast new wing of bedrooms was built from scratch.

That weird mix of Downton Abbey and Footballers’ Wives is here in spades. The original stove is here, though from floor plans it looks like this may not be the original kitchen. There is the roasting fire, with ferocious iron spits. Kettles and cauldrons big enough to boil a child in sit on the old stove. Chains and pulleys give a sense of the hot heft and heave of cooking for a big house. Gigantic ceramic urns filled with spray-painted branches stand on top of the warming ovens.

So, apart from a credibility gap in the decor what else can go wrong? Plenty, as it turns out. When will bars figure out that if the kitchen is an assembly operation then they should assemble only good things? There are enough great Irish ingredients out there to make simple, delicious and authentic food you can eat at a bar table. Warm soda bread, hunks of farmhouse cheeses, a bowl of leek and potato soup, potted crab, a slow-simmered stew to name a few.

So the two main courses arrive. Mine is a thick wedge of goats’ cheese on top of onions, supposedly caramelised but actually just a messy, bitter tangle that is the yellow-brown colour of flesh-coloured tights. Underneath them is an unpleasant disc of slightly burned pastry. If there’s a rosemary infusion it is undetectable, and the cheese has a throat-closing cloying consistency. It’s like a large patty of “goat-flavoured” cream cheese. It comes with a soup bowl filled with lettuce that looks like supermarket bag mix, quartered tasteless tomatoes and chunks of cucumber.

Across the table, my mum’s crispy cod is crispy in the suspiciously-orange-crumbed sort of way familiar to time-pressed people who tip frozen fish on to trays and heat them up. The flesh has that slightly translucent tinge that speaks of life in a freezer prior to eating. A chunky tartare sauce is about the best thing on the plate. The chips are stale and taste like an elderly oil has been used to cook them. She also gets a bowl of what appear to be bagged leaves. No dressing on either salad, yet someone has piped a squeezy bottle squiggle of lollipop-sweet balsamic dressing on to my plate, the kind of culinary flounce that fools fewer people these days.

The service here is great, efficient and friendly. But with two glasses of house wine at €7.60 the bill for this staggeringly ordinary food comes to €42.20.

A second night of mediocrity is not attractive, so the following evening we drive to Maynooth for the early bird at Avenue Café, a small restaurant on the main street. We are glad of our booking as they’re turning people away. The early bird crowd in this small place gives it a friendly, busy and warm feel. It reminds me of Donnelli’s, a favourite restaurant in our old hometown of Wicklow. It’s hard work filling a small restaurant in a satellite town and to do it you have to serve good food at good prices.

The two-course early bird is €18 here and mum goes for a main with dessert while I opt for a starter. There’s a slight wobble when the salmon fish cake arrives with a similar orange breadcrumb coating (is there a homage to the fish-finger happening around Maynooth?), but the innards are tasty enough and it’s served on ribbons of cucumber with a lovely simple cucumber and yoghurt raita on top.

The mains are very good. My braised lamb shank is a huge chunk of meat on the bone. It’s thready and dark, the fat cooked into the flesh in a six-hour braising, a kind of confit of lamb. Great mashed spud, a roasted shallot and two roasted carrots come with it and it’s all drenched in a good red-wine gravy.

Mum’s burger with bacon and melted cheese is a tasty piece of meat, though a little on the chilly side. Had we asked I’m sure the friendly waitress would have whipped it away for a reheat on the pan.

We order a bottle of the wine of the month, a Chilean Oveja Negra Shiraz, for €19 and it comes with a screw cap to give the driver an end-of-the evening reward glass after the drive home. A sticky toffee pudding with two spoons is tooth-achingly sweet, a steamed tower of sponge in a pool of warm caramel with delicious ice cream in a biscuit case. A case of pure re-tox in these days of detox.

This hard-working restaurant has none of the captive audience of a large hotel and is pulling in the crowds at the weekend. It’s easy to see why. Good food at reasonable prices is what people expect. I’m guessing we’re not the first guests to leave the big house to eat here. Twitter.com/Catherineeats

The Kitchen Bar Carton House Hotel, Maynooth, Co Kildare, 01-6517703. Bar food with two glasses of wine for two, €42.20 Avenue Café Main Street, Maynooth, Co Kildare, 01-6285003.

Dinner for two with a bottle of wine, €55

Facilities: Upstairs at the Avenue Café. Wheelchair accessible at the hotel

Music: Easy listening from ceiling speakers at the Avenue Café, a distant sound like a kitchen radio in The Kitchen Bar at Carton House

Atmosphere: Buzzing at the Avenue Café, slightly subdued at Carton

Service: Excellent in both locations

Provenance: Very good, with suppliers name-checked in the Avenue Café. None given in the bar at Carton House