The toast with the most as carbs reign supreme

It’s a slight exaggeration to say that Cork was rocked to its foundations last August when the Crawford Gallery Café closed. But only a slight one. For years, this was one of the city’s great meeting places and the food, strongly influenced by Ballymaloe, was always good, eclectic and underpinned by exceptionally wholesome baking. It was not just one of great meeting places for the city; the county flocked there too on shopping visits.

There were times, I noticed, that there were as many customers from west of Bandon as from the less far-flung parts. No wonder the loss was widely felt.

The good news is that the café has been back in action since before Christmas and is now in the hands of Beth Haughton and Harold Lynch, late of Dockland, also in the city.

Now renamed – and repainted as The Green Room, it’s different but still good, catering now, certainly, for heartier appetites than in its previous incarnation. Judging by the crowds that have been flocking there, especially at lunchtime, Leesiders have taken to the generous portions and emphasis on carbs that seem to be a large part of the new menu.

If you enjoy serious toasties, this is the place for you. Of course, it’s not entirely a Cork thing – you only have to think of the success of Griolladh in Dublin – although the often overlooked Liberty Grill on Washington Street has long been another champion of this approach to eating in the rebel city.

On the menu for my two recent visits, the carbs are represented by no fewer than two separate toasties and two distinct crèpes, while toasted sourdough makes an appearance with two other dishes. And very good sourdough it is.

Even the seared beef salad comes with big, crunchy onion rings borne aloft, and they are very good too.

It was with the smaller of the two seared beef salads (€17) that I started and it was virtually a meal itself. The strips of beef were large and cooked a little rare – yay! – and the copious green stuff and nuggets of Cashel Blue cheese were accompanied by a pretty serious payload of crunchy cubed potatoes. Yes, just in case there was any suspicion of a carbohydrate deficit.

By the time my companion had got through his baked mushroom and spinach crèpe (€15) he was glad not to have had a starter, tempted as he had been by the soup of the day – which, I have to say, looked like the real deal – accompanied by brown bread.

This crépe, filled with the vegetable element and bechamel, was topped with a hollandaise sauce and baked until golden and bubbling. It was packed with flavour and was enormously rich and warming, a rib-sticking treat on a cold winter’s day.

A good salad of mixed leaves provided a degree of balance.

I need to have a well-honed appetite before I approach a toasted cheese sandwich of any sort and I was fortunate to have one when approaching The Green Room’s intriguingly titled Bombay Toastie (€12). I doubt if Mumbai, as

TO BE HONEST, I MISS THE OLD VERSION, BUT I QUITE LIKE ITS REPLACEMENT

Bombay has been renamed, has ever seen the like but that city is missing a trick.

Essentially this is a toasted cheddar cheese sandwich, its bread element delightfully crisp and buttery, with a generous insertion of ‘green chilli pesto’ that features, in addition to the heat of little peppers, plenty of equally blitzed coriander leaves. I would never have thought of putting such a thing with cheese, but I’m very glad that Beth Haughton did. This has the makings of a classic.

The accompanying mixed salad and chunky red cabbage slaw made this main course surprisingly balanced, providing a counterpoint to the richness of the spicy, oozy, gooey sandwich.

What, you are entitled to ask, did we have then? Have you not been paying attention? You would need a cast iron constitution and a morning’s route march – as against some gentle pottering around the English Market and the bookshops – to have any hope of persevering with the business of eating. We could not go on.

So we missed the almond and clementine cake – almond and orange confections being a Cork tradition at this stage – and even the delicious and relatively lightsounding zabaglione semifreddo was a dish too far. The seductively if simply named boozy chocolate mousse could not woo us. Even for sharing.

What the café at the Crawford may have lost in terms of subtlety, it has gained in heartiness and the satiation of big appetites. To be totally honest, I miss the old version but I quite like its replacement.

I’ll just make sure to exercise thoroughly in advance of my next visit. And perhaps even venture into the dessert section…