CO Cork the county, the city and the coast. When we use the expression "food culture" to describe the resurgence of Irish cooking and artisan food production, it is always to Co Cork that we turn, for no other area so precisely and splendidly sums up the strengths, attractions and uniqueness of our food culture.
The thousands of holidaymakers who area currently flocking to the coast of the county arrive there in large measure because of this food culture, and its rich mix of restaurants and good places to stay. But everywhere in Cork expresses a precious fold of good food, from the ancient pastures of the north to the fine seafood of the east coast, from the dazzling restaurant culture of the city to the exotica of the western reaches, this is a county founded on producing and cooking food.
Part of its success lies with the fact that much of the best food is produced in such unlikely circumstances. The best example of this unlikeliness is perhaps John Desmond and Ellmary Fenton's Island Cottage Restaurant, an establishment which turns the conventional wisdom of the restaurant business on its head.
Restaurant wisdom has it that the three most important factors involved in a restaurant are, respectively, location, location, and Island Cottage does have an impressive location. Beautiful, indeed. But to get there you must first drive down a very long and bendy road, a few miles out of Skibbereen, then take a boat ride over to Heir Island, and then walk about half a mile up to the little cottage, smack in the middle of this little cusp of land. Imagine trying to sell that concept to the bank manager.
And yet, in the Cork way of doing things, Heir Island is a terrific success, full to its modest capacity during the season, and Mr Desmond's cookery classes during the winter are also booked up.
But its success is founded on a number of simple truths about Cork food, truths that keep any notion of gimmick at bay, truths that reveal the method behind this seeming madness.
Vitally, the cooking is superb Mr Desmond was one of the six finalists in the first Bord Bia cookery competition, and a recent dinner showed a chef at the very peak of his powers carpaccio of salmon with a fennel mayonnaise duck breast with leek and roast potatoes a dazzling garden salad, then Gubbeen and Coolea cheeses, and finally a lemon crepe souffle. This is cooking which is both wonderfully logical yet personally expressive, with all of the chef's gifts subtlety, balance, instinct working together perfectly.
The vivacity of the cooking, importantly, takes its cue from local foods. Like many other Cork chefs, Mr Desmond exploits his area and the seasons local cheeses, local fish, local herbs. Done like this, the cooking is an aleph of the county from each plate, we can see the food culture working at full tilt.
But the great Cork cooks have always done it this way. Over on the other side of the county from Heir Island, Myrtle Allen has practised this creed of local food in its season for over three decades in Ballymaloe House. In the Cork Covered Market, Kay Harte in the Farmgate Cafe creates daily menus using only what is being sold in the market downstairs.
Declan Ryan, in the Arbutus Lodge, remains ever faithful to the splendid kassler smoked by the O'Flynn brothers, while if you eat the pork in Longueville House, in north Cork, it is the produce of a local man, Seamus Hagan. Mr Hogan, by the way, also happens to be a poet. The unlikeliness of it!
But the unlikeliness is what seems to motivate these people, that and a strong sense of competition. Cork city doesn't possess the corporate riches of Dublin, and so the restaurants can never take, business for granted. The county doesn't have the copious tourist, numbers of Co Kerry, so there can be no slacking, safe in the knowledge that a different, but equally hungry, mob will be along tomorrow night.
This inability to rest on its laurels has meant that Cork and its cooks have always worked hard to " chisel out its food profile.a The result of this struggle has been the existence of many cooks who stand as the definitive creators of modem Irish cooking.
Who can, cook fish better than the Fitzgibbons of Aheraes in Youghal, unless it is Youea Jacob, of Baltimore? Who else can match the terrific vegetarian cookery of Dennis Cotter's Cafe Paradiso, unless it is Seamus O'Connell of The Ivory Tower?
No one can cure fish the way they do it in Katherine Noren's Dunworley Cottage restaurant, in Butlerstown, and nobody makes an oyster sausage like Bill Patterson, in The Oystercatcher, near Oysterhaven. No one can beat the sandwiches made in Sean Calder Pott's market stall, lago, and the very best crepes are to be found in Fermoy, in La Bigoudenne, on the main street. Time and again, when we look for the benchmark, we have to concede that Cork sets the standard.
AND this is true in every area of the food culture. Macroom Oatineal, Gabriel Cheese. Manch Estate potatoes. O'Connell's fish. Adele Connor's sourdough loaves. Frank Hederman's smoked eel.
Ummera smoked salmon. Clonakilty black pudding. North, south, east and west, Cork is best.
The best way, then to get the best out of Cork is to design a tour around the places to eat, making sure you are in Timoleague for Sunday lunch in Lettercollum House, with a pint in Dillon's pub in the village first of all.
Stopping in Schull and having dinner in Adele with a pint in Arundel's pub beforehand here has to be a boisterous dinner in Ballydehob in Annie Barry's lovely little restaurant, with a pint across the road in Levis's as you make up your mind.
And of course one must nott miss Heir Island, and Ballymaloe House make sure, you check out Wendy Whelan's shop and Hazel Bourke's brilliantly simple food in Assolas House, just outside Kanturk.
And a seafood lunch at Heron's Cove, in Goleen, sitting out at the water's edge, and a weekend dinner in The Farmgate in Midleton, and the mesmerising delight of Blair's Cove, just outside Durrus, and maybe a spoil yourself dinner in Michael Clifford's eponymous restaurant in the city, to bring the itinerary to a close.