To some people, 'good, plain food' means cremated meat, stock cubes, spuds and carrots. But at Idaho Café, in Cork city, it means great ingredients and delicious results, writes Tom Doorley
Good Plain Food. Isn't that a terrifying phrase? "My husband likes Good Plain Food" usually translates as: "I am married to a Neanderthal who eats only cremated meat. Had he ever heard of Delia Smith he would regard her as a dangerous radical."
Good Plain Food, in the prevailing sense of the phrase, means meat, spuds, carrots and broccoli. It means raw materials bought on price alone and the liberal use of chemical stock cubes. It means battery eggs and bacon that is not so much meat as a rich source of white scum. It means sausages that it is best not to ask too much about. It means ham that is mainly water. It means the kind of rubbish that you have to queue for as it dehydrates beneath heat lamps.
Good Plain Food is the kind of stuff eaten by people who say: "I eat to live." It is eaten by the kind of people for whom quantity and salt content come first. It is eaten by the kind of neopuritans who say: "We should be grateful to have anything at all to eat. It wasn't always like this, you know." It is eaten by far too many people because far too many people have either forgotten what real food tastes like or have never experienced it.
In fact good, plain food - when it is precisely that - is brilliant. Lamb chops. New potatoes. A green salad. Irish stew. Toasted cheese, provided the cheese is real. A ham sandwich made with proper bread, proper ham and plenty of good mustard. Scrambled organic free-range eggs on home-made brown toast. Lentil soup made with proper chicken stock. All of these things are good - potentially brilliant, actually - and plain. Not even the greatest achievements of haute cuisine, lathered in mousseline and festooned with shavings of white truffle, can claim to be better than the best of good, plain food.
The sad thing is that good, plain food is hard to find. Restaurateurs seem to be united in a desire to tart stuff up and do silly, cheffy things, possibly because they can disguise poor produce this way.
Some of the best good, plain food in the country is to be had at the tiny Idaho Café, behind Brown Thomas in Cork. And because of this it is always full. People know good, plain food when they taste it.
Three of us had lunch there one recent Saturday. There was a shepherdess's pie, with minced beef rather than lamb and a creamy potato topping. There was a smoked-fish pie (haddock, I think), topped with equally excellent and creamy spud and a final layer of melted red cheddar.
And there were little gnocchi bathed in a creamy sauce of smoked bacon and fresh sage. Each of these main courses cost €9.95 and came with a little salad of lettuce leaves and freshly, thinly sliced onion with a sprinkling of sunflower seeds.
Two desserts were more than enough. A flourless orange-and-almond cake was moist, delicious and coeliac-friendly; a warmed chocolate cake was rich, dark and not too sweet.
We also had two bottles of Italian mineral water, a glass of wine, a Coke, an espresso and a cappuccino. The bill came to €54.30.
The Idaho people have registered the name Bapini to describe their generous and refreshingly unsquashed toasted baps - such as "smoked kasseler, tomato, relish and molten cheddar" - and these are now a Cork institution.
Belgian waffles, with organic maple syrup or chocolate sauce, are yet another reason to visit. And the breakfasts are much more than a foundation for the day.
Idaho does a limited menu and it does it brilliantly. There are no gimmicks, no cheffing around, just good raw materials, minimal cooking and a friendly, bustling atmosphere. Isn't it a wonder that so few places use such a simple and successful formula?
Idaho Café, Caroline Street, Cork, 021-4276376
WINE CHOICE In keeping with its down-to-earth philosophy, Idaho does four straightforward wines, each at €16.50 a bottle or, equally remarkable, €3.95 a glass. They are Cullemborg Chenin Blanc and Cullemborg Cinsault - both from South Africa and pleasantly fruity - and Vieux Clocher, from the Cotes du Ventoux; the white is fresh and peachy, the red quite fleshy but with a decent dollop of tannin. All offer exceptional value for money, well beyond the realms of the usual house wine. If you prefer beer, you can have Heineken or Murphy's