Superior chipper that has really come out of its shell

By sheer chance I managed to get to East Pier in Dunmore East on a bright, sunny if slightly chilly spring afternoon and there’s no doubt that weather is big factor when eating al fresco. All of our Irish coastline can get very fresco indeed a lot of the time. So, I was winning.

Lunching in rural Ireland can be a tricky business if you want to go beyond a ‘jambon’ from the hot deli in a filling station. Actual restaurants serving anything beyond ambitious sandwiches and the odd salad are a rarity and you need to do your research. I never cease to be surprised at how even the most basic chippers are often not open at lunchtime. In this respect, the rather lovely Waterford seaside town of Dunmore East, smaller and a bit more rarefied than Tramore, which is a 30-minute drive away towards the Copper Coast, is fortunate. Unlike Tramore it doesn’t have the fabulous Beach House, but its visitors can take comfort in East Pier.

East Pier is, essentially, a stationary food truck and a little food shop that also sells coffee and sweet things – including a trip down memory lane for me, a Macaroon Bar, something I’ve not had since, I think, my days in primary school; I thought they had vanished as we all became more sophisticated with the passing years.

This is a superior takeaway with outside seating, some of it covered, and tables made from old cable reels. It’s a no-nonsense kind of place, so don’t expect frills or cheffiness. But it’s also the only takeaway that I know where you can have oysters, expertly shucked and served properly, ie well chilled and sitting on a bed of ice. Such things, enjoyed in sunshine and the fresh air, are a luxury, and so it was at East Pier. We decided to have ours with an Asian dressing – essentially shredded pickled ginger with a touch of soya sauce. The local oysters, from Woodstown Bay, just around the coast from Dunmore East, were robust enough for such treatment but if you prefer them in a more natural state, you can have them just with a squeeze of lemon.

This, if you like, was our starter.

We added to it some peel-and-dip prawns, not the local kind, I should stress but they decent and certainly very juicy; and there was a good mayonnaise fortified with grain mustard. Had we been eating just for ourselves, these dishes might have sufficed, but we were, in a sense, eating for Ireland. Or, at least, for you, the reader.

So we bravely ordered too much, purely in the interests of science. Now, fish and chips are a combination that can be very, very good or very, very bad, and all states in between. At the risk of sounding like Eamon Dunphy, the fish and chips on the day at East Pier, were good but not great. Great fish and chips have certain qualities, like a crisp batter coating that appears to

IT’S A NO-NONSENSE KIND OF PLACE, SO DON’T EXPECT FRILLS OR CHEFFINESS

have absorbed no oil. Actually the best of the best are cooked in beef dripping – as at Iasc in Dungarvan – and likewise are reluctant to absorb much in the way of fat.

The best chips are almost indecently crisp on the exterior but soft and fluffy within.

The fish – haddock – and chips at East Pier erred a little on the side of oiliness but they were tasty. That’s not a technical phrase, I know, and one I tend to avoid – but that’s how they were. Decent stuff.

Calamari and chips were quite a contrast. The calamari were the baby kind – promising the best flavour – and had been encased in quite a thick coat of very crisp breadcrumbs. They were good but perhaps on the dry side. A coating that allowed the calamari a bit more self-expression, so to speak, would have been much better. There seemed to be as much coating as creature of the deep, to be honest, but it was good wholesome stuff.

As for the chips, they were good but not great. Moderately crisp at first but becoming rather flaccid, reasonably fluffy within.

I should add that I salute and revere those who can cook outstanding chips. It takes not just skill and timing but also the right spud for the time of year. Most places don’t manage to get all the variables right, no doubt because chips are a kind of wallpaper food. They tend to be just there. So if you find a great chip, embrace it. A messy business, potentially.

So, East Pier may have been a bit of a curate’s egg on the day, but Dunmore East and environs is lucky to have it. And those oysters were perfect.