If you don't have a boat to mess about on, there is very little else to do on a rainy day in Baltimore, west Cork, than hang around La Jolie Brise, a cafe and pizzeria that is owned by Youen of the famous Chez Youen restaurant nearby. Chez Youen is known in foodie circles for its superb seafood and hefty prices. La Jolie Brise is the baby brother, a bright busy place that is so packed with people all day long that you wonder what everyone did before it opened last year.
It is at the centre of the village, with a big courtyard in front where people sit, whatever the weather, with their friends, children, dogs and newspapers. Sit here for an hour and you will see just about everyone there is to see in Baltimore. Inside, La Jolie Brise is a light airy place with battered tables and chairs, lots of pictures of ships in storms, an open fireplace and an open kitchen where you can see your pizza being pummelled. Go to Baltimore out of season and you will spend many a morning here, either sitting in the window looking out at the drizzle, or sitting outside in the drizzle, codding yourself that it is quite warm, even continental. Later in the day you will almost certainly have lunch here. Put in another few hours doing very little and lo! it's dinnertime - back into the Jolie Brise for a change. In other words, they are doing a roaring trade.
All of this would be very relaxing and friendly were it not for the slightly chilly reception that one gets in the Jolie Brise. The staff seem like a close-knit crew and there is plenty of chatting and guffawing going on behind the counter. The service is brisk but perfunctory. Children are tolerated so long as they stay in their seats, and the waitresses seemed jaded already, with the season hardly begun. Maybe you have to be a long-term visitor before you're allowed to join in the behind-the-counter banter. Baltimore has the reputation of being a cliquey sort of place. It didn't take long for someone to tell us that the holiday village we were staying in - just slightly on the outskirts - is known locally as Soweto.
Certainly, by 11 o'clock on the morning we visited, the staff had not warmed up enough to serve cappuccinos with anything like a smile. The coffee was only so-so, served in smart cups but with that bitter sawdusty taste that no amount of froth will make up for.
A friend got short shrift when he asked for a latte. There was only regular coffee or cappuccino. When he suggested a milky regular coffee, he got it drowned in cold milk. We took our coffees outside and sat in a freak ray of sunshine, but as my friend tried to angle himself to catch the full glare of it, he didn't notice his nice linen shirt cuff trailing into the seagull poo on the tabletop. Later we took a posse of children to lunch inside and were seated at a big oval table in the middle of the room.
Like most frazzled parents, our main concern was to get them fed - and quickly - so we didn't linger over the menus. It was only when we all had fairly standard pizzas and pasta dishes in front of us that I looked around and saw other people being served with gleaming mounds of smoked salmon, steaming vats of mussels with chips on the side and big steaks and salads.
I got the menu back to see what I was missing. The starters - plates of smoked mackerel and salmon, bayonne ham, pate or soup, are served exactly as one would like them after a hearty sail around the bay or a walk up to the Beacon - with lashings of bread and butter. The smoked salmon is the most expensive, at £6, but it's a very generous amount. Our lot were delighted with their two huge margherita pizzas despite the thick doughy bases that made them difficult to cut. Our cutlery included a pizza cutter, but I prefer when they do this job for you so that no one has to risk severing a finger over lunch. I had ordered calzone - a fold-over pizza named after a pair of trousers for some reason - filled with mozzarella, ham and egg. Several of the pizzas had fish toppings, smoked tuna, smoked salmon, shellfish, and the most expensive, the £8 Mario, had scallops and garlic. My calzone was nicely puffed up and brown on the outside but bland on the inside, with too much gloopy cheese and a still cold wodge of that wafer-thin ham. One adventurous eight-year-old in our group had ordered tagliatelle carbonara with bacon and got a huge bowl of it, studded with big chunks of smoky bacon. I had my eye on it but he worked his way solidly through, telling us that this was his favourite restaurant ever.
My husband's Napoli salad was far better than you would expect for £4 - a decent amount of salad leaves with a heap of smoked tuna dressed in olive oil on top. Chips for the children came in a little breakfast bowl and were of the type that manage to be crisp and ooze fat at the same time. Drinks were in cans on the table. Sadly, there was no time to linger over a bottle of wine. The wine list, included in the menu, is brief and to the point, with a handful each of white and red wines ranging in price from £9.50 to £13.50. The desserts list is pretty short, too. In fact, there are only two things on it - Tiramisu or ice-cream. The pizza had done its work for us and no one was hungry for more. The place had filled up nicely, with a mix of preppy teenagers with their collars firmly in the upright position, sea dog types wearing swishy plastic jackets and several French tourists who must have come to find Youen himself, the Frenchman who pulled into Baltimore over 30 years ago and fell in love with it and a woman from Sherkin Island. He was there all right, parked in a corner, surveying the room with a rather unfriendly eye and smoking an enormous cigar.
Smoking seems to be the one thing the Jolie Brise staff are passionate about. In between serving the food and making the coffees, they light up and puff away, squinting through the smoke. On my way to the toilet I could see two of the kitchen staff dangling fags and having an intense conversation that included lots of shoulder shrugging and moues.
It was all very French, just like the toilets, which stink. Our bill, for two adults and four children came to a ridiculously reasonable £30. The good news is that it's open "every day of the year" according to Youen, from 8.30 a.m. until midnight. Every town in Ireland should have one.
La Jolie Brise, Baltimore, Co Cork. Tel 028 20441. Open 8.30 a.m. - midnight, "every day of the year". Mastercard, Visa and Laser cards all accepted.
