There has been a significant change in the way critics and the public have responded to restaurants, in recent years. Where once you needed to dress up a diningroom in Colefax & Fowler, and needed to dress up staff in penguin gear, before anyone would regard you as "serious", nowadays we all appreciate that those old totems are not merely meaningless, but may be cause for suspicion, rather than praise. After all, if you are spending all your time and money on drapes and napery, how much concentration have you left to make sure the food is right?
Cooks such as Emer Murray understood this years ago. When she first opened Goya's, on Galway's Shop Street, she had the teeniest of rooms in which to bake, cook and serve. But while the space was as simple as could be - a little counter, a few tables and chairs, the kitchen up the stairs - you could have bet your life that no matter what, the coffee and the cakes and the bakes and the breads in Goya's were not merely the best they could be, but were effortlessly the best in the city.
The space she works from today - a swish, stylish room that wraps itself around the corner in Kirwan's Lane - may be grander and bigger, but nothing else has changed from the Goya's of old. Emer Murray has always concentrated on the immediate thing: that every cup of coffee should be perfect, every cake as well made as every other cake, every simple lunch as fine as could be. She is one of those wise cooks who knows that God is in the detail, in every detail.
If the people of Galway are somewhat cursed by the fact that she doesn't open Goya's in the evening, they are blessed by the fact that being open only during the day means there is no dilution of her concentration. A recent lunch meal, for example, was inspiring, with every detail so accurately achieved that it was mesmerising.
A bowl of vegetable soup was expertly concocted, the flavours of the puree slightly sweet and rich, the stock flavour deep and rewarding, the whole thing showing the art of soup making. Indeed, this is perhaps what Goya's is all about: the art of each action, whether that is making a bowl of soup, a sandwich, even just a cup of coffee.
HOW else can one explain how a simple toasted sandwich, with tomato, onion, cheese and ham, - which in many lunchtime places is so dull - was here just perfect. Again, like the soup, the art of this simple thing had been explored and revealed, and I almost had to pinch myself to remember that I was eating the staple lunch of every dire pub in the county. Here, however, I was served something which simply could not have been better, something where the simplicity of the dish had not misled anyone into being careless or commonplace. This was a sandwich made to perfection, a sandwich made with love.
Chicken Liver Pate with Cumberland sauce was sublime, the sauce just ever so sharp-sweet as it should be, the pate smooth and rich. Put a slice of this on some bread, spoon on some sauce, and bite into it, and you will curse the fact that culinary fashion has meant that collaborations such as this are doomed to go out of fashion. Cooked lovingly, as this was, Chicken Liver Pate with Cumberland sauce is ageless, because it is classic. What has sent it out of fashion, of course, is the fact that it was cooked so badly, so often, by so many careless cooks.
Coffees and chocolate torte were just as fine as everything else, the cake a sumptuous balance of ingredients exactingly finished and executed, the coffee as narcotic as one always hopes for.
And maybe, in the end of the day, as we try to figure just what Goya's is all about - aside from the concentration on detail, the appreciation of the art of every action, the marvellous service, and the style of the new room on Kirwan's Lane - we are confronted with the simple fact that Emer Murray cooks all the food she produces with love. To appreciate and understand the virtues of cookery so implicitly, so unconditionally, and to know that cooking is about making something as well as it can possibly be made, irrespective of how simple it may be, that is truly an act of love.
Goya's, Kirwan's Lane, Galway, Co Galway tel: 091 567010 Open 9.30 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon-Sat. Major cards.