EATING OUT: Prices are vexing everyone, writes Tom Doorley.
Two subjects have been dominating e-mails from readers in the past few weeks: the excessive cost of eating out in Ireland and why, oh why, didn't I taste the tripe and drisheen that George Hook so kindly cooked on the recent episode of The Restaurant? Well, I've tasted tripe and onions on three occasions now and it has tasted and, more importantly, smelled worse every time. I inhaled the odour of George's version deeply, prodded it with a fork, and decided that I'd rather sample a dish of blanched slugs simmered in milk with a bay leaf. And I most certainly did taste the drisheen, only to find it marginally less horrible than last time.
As to the cost of eating out, I too am bamboozled. Eagle-eyed readers will have noted that, to date, one of the very best meals and the absolutely worst meal reviewed here were separated by a mere €20; and these two were consumed in Dublin where rents are exorbitant. What leaves me speechless is the cost of eating out in provincial towns; generally, you don't get a discount to reflect the fact that the proprietor is not forking out €300,000 a year in rent. You may as well be eating in Temple Bar.
A quick trip to the delightful town of Westport was made with the express purpose of sampling the grub at The Lemon Peel, a place that has been regularly recommended to me. It was not an unalloyed pleasure and it was far from cheap. Indeed the damage was very steep for a place where the menu and wine list come as a single, laminated, wipe-clean sheet.
The very phrase "Mediterannean spring roll" should have been enough to warn me, but I thought, what the hell, perhaps the kitchen has taken the confusion out of fusion? What appeared on the plate was truly bizarre: a splendidly crisp and ungreasy spring roll, cut in half and filled with - steady now - thick batons of cucumber, chunks of "fetta" cheese and some semi-sundried tomatoes. This was dished up with a mint and yoghurt "dip" which was spread around the plate, some sweet chilli sauce and some kind of pink concoction based on peppers. Oh yes, and salad. Did it work? Of course not, but it did have a certain grim fascination.
There was no fascination whatsoever in the main course of "brill stuffed with crab" beyond the mystery of why anyone would create such a dish ... Yes, it was brill: thoroughly overcooked brill which had been imperfectly boned and wrapped around the stuffing which was not of crab but of crab mixed with mashed potato. Lashings of mashed potato. The whole affair was served with a sauce that lay somewhere between beurre blanc and mayonnaise.
"Vegatables" involved everything under the sun, stir-fried (some of them rather charred) in a sharp, spicy sauce. As a piquant vegetarian takeaway it would have been adequate. Here it smothered what flavour had survived in the fish.
I generally hate crème brûlée that has been cheffed up, but here the addition of white chocolate and raspberries produced a dessert of near celestial quality. And I salute the coffee - an intense little espresso with a proper tiger-skin crema on top.
The Lemon Peel was heaving with people on the Thursday evening I visited. Generally, it is advisable to book. The room is long and relatively narrow, the style of decor is simple and unfussy, and the absence of tablecloths suggests a down-to-earth bistro or café.
Would that it were. There was nothing down to earth about what I ate - bar the brûlée perhaps - and the bill would not have been out of place in Dublin 4. Had I confined myself to a couple of glasses of house wine, the damage would have been more than €50 for one. As it happens, along with a doggy-bottle of wine it came to a staggering €73.60. Silly food and cheeky prices - there's a lot of it about.
The Lemon Peel, The Octagon, Westport, Co Mayo, 098-26929, www.lemonpeel.ie.
WINE CHOICE: A curiously random selection with more white than red and some strange misprints. "Cotes du Roussicion"? And a "snipe" of Piper-Heidsieck Champagne is hardly a bargain at €16.95. Nor is a bottle of "Prommery" at €75. My Bonny Doon Ca' del Solo was simply not worth €32.95; this is, after all, a simple, crisp white from California. Georges Duboeuf Cuvée house wines are €16.95 but are pretty dull. David Wynn Shiraz and Chardonnay at €26.95 are decent wines, fairly priced by prevailing standards, as is Georges Duboeuf Brouilly at €26.95. I should have had the offbeat Bourgogne Aligote Domaine des Ramparts at €21.95.