EATING OUT:IT'S THE STUFF of a surreal nightmare. You are being stalked by a cheese. First you meet the cheesemaker and hear the story of heart-thumping excitement on the night in September when her new cheese was crowned supreme champion in the British Cheese Awards. Helen Finnegan beat 900 other cheesemakers in Britain and Ireland to the top cheese Oscar (the Choscar). And then everywhere you turn, it's there. Knockdrinna goats' cheese. Soon they'll be handing it out at traffic lights.
Kilkenny is as bashful about its food as it is about its hurling. It’s the Savour Kilkenny weekend and to say that they’re cherishing local ingredients is like saying they like to wear a bit of yellow and black around a certain sports fixture in September.
And, like Goatsbridge trout, the recently crowned Knockdrinna (their Kilree got the prize) is everywhere. It’s been on virtually every plate over the food festival weekend.
In Zuni Townhouse and Restaurant for Sunday lunch, it comes as a Knockdrinna spring roll. What arrives is much more cheese stick than spring roll but as good a treatment as this champion cheese deserves.
Zuni is a small hotel in Kilkenny city centre, one of the places that flourished under the soft, balmy rain of tourist euro. This lovely compact city can throw a party like few others and was once in danger of becoming the Temple Bar of the southeast. But they’ve managed to keep other visitors happy alongside the stags and hens, by giving them good places to eat.
We sit in the front café part at first, waiting and reading the menu. This is a nice place, although the door is open to allow the occasional wheely-bag dragging guest to wander through after they check out. We’re taken through to the restaurant at the back. It’s done in that dark brown so beloved of restaurant designers, a few booths to carve up the space, snowy-white linens on the tables and sparkling glasses.
The kitchen is behind a stainless-steel screen, and through a hatch we can see serious-faced chefs doing things methodically and a stack of clean, well-used frying pans.
My Knockdrinna starter is brilliant. Two long batons of filo pastry have had a layer of cheese baked inside and are then balanced on some pumpkin hummus. Pale pinky-brown discs of quince paste and some dots of fiery chilli jelly are dotted around.
It’s all finished off with some micro leaves of yellow chard, which have the earthy, almost-potatoey flavour of chard but are tender and delicate enough to eat raw. The pumpkin hummus is delicious, made with plenty of tahini and garlic and a gorgeous use of the innards of the jack-o-lantern vegetables.
Liam gets a large clump of skinny calamares breaded and fried. Tiny green pellets of wasabi roe (the roe of a flying fish marinated in the hot Japanese condiment) sit in dots of crème fraîche.
His duck main course is also Asian-influenced although it seems to be straddling two worlds. The duck has been confited and then crumbed with a sweet spiced topping, which is delicious. Crisply fried pak choi is bedding down on top of a large dollop of mashed spud. Everything is very competently cooked but it’s an attempt to please all the people all the time.
My sea bass is perfect and generously large. Two fillets crisply fried in butter come with two flying saucers of pasta filled with crab. A parmesan crumb on top is a little too punchy for the delicate crab but the fish is terrific.
And like alien Christmas trees, there are perfect florets of romanesco broccoli. They are beautifully green and perfectly cooked, and look like they were designed in the studio of a mathematically-minded architect. Underneath the fish is a clump of lavishly-buttered and gorgeous samphire.
Like the romanesco broccoli, this is Sunday lunch but not as we know it. We’re too full for dessert and we come out for a little over €50 with a glass of orange juice and a house Picpoul for the non-driver. Two Americanos finish us off at €1.90 apiece. This is a great kitchen set in the heart of a county learning to celebrate its superb local ingredients.
Lunch for two with drinks and coffee came to €54.95.
Zuni
26 Patrick Street, Kilkenny, 056-7723999
Facilities:Good
Music:1980s pop classics
Food provenance:Excellent, lots of local produce
Wheelchair access:Yes
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