Now Cork’s the real culinary capital too as Michelins roll in

While stars awarded to top trio are to be welcomed...

CORK can lay claim to being the real culinary capital of Ireland – after three of its restaurants were awarded coveted Michelin stars yesterday.

Cork city’s Japanese restaurant Ichigo Ichie received a star as well as two west Cork eateries – Mews in Baltimore and Restaurant Chestnut in nearby Ballydehob.

These new accolades bring Ireland’s Michelin star total to 14 and boost west Cork’s credentials as a fine-dining destination.

‘It does wonders for Cork and it’s what Cork needs,’ Restaurant Chestnut chef Rob Krawczyk told the Irish Daily Mail. ‘To take it outside of the city is great. There are a lot of small producers and they’re so passionate about what they do. It makes it very easy for us to show that – without good produce you can’t cook anything and that’s very important.

‘There hasn’t been a Michelin star in Cork for about 20 years so that’s incredible as well. It’s huge, it’s very unexpected. Literally six months we’ve been open.’

Mr Krawczyk, who said he and his wife always wanted to open a small restaurant and use local produce, added: ‘It’s a huge honour to receive it. We’re a small team but a great team and we worked really hard, we’re really passionate. It’s fantastic.’

Restaurant Chestnut looks out over a monument of wrestler Danno O’Mahony at the entrance to Ballydehob village. An intimate restaurant, it only seats 18 and is open from March through December, using seasonal ingredients in a nature-inspired menu.

Less than 30 kilometres away is Mews, which serves a tasting menu based on the best local produce that it sources directly from small farmers, market gardeners, foragers and local fishermen.

And back in Cork city, where chef Takashi Miyazaki arrived ten years ago from Japan, diners can enjoy kappo-style cuisine at Ichigo Ichie, which translates as ‘once in a lifetime’.

The 25-seater restaurant offers a no-choice 12-course tasting menu for €95, which impressed Michelin inspectors enough to award the restaurant one star – meaning it is a ‘very good restaurant’.

According to the prestigious guide, two stars indicate ‘excellent cooking that is worth a detour’ and three stars mean ‘exceptional cuisine that is worth a special journey’.

‘The inspectors have seen exciting things happening in Ireland this year and much of it in Co. Cork,’ said Michelin Guide Britain and Ireland editor Rebecca Burr.

‘There’s a lot of ability in Ireland right now. As everyone knows, the produce is stunning and it’s great to see chefs with such passion and personality in their food.’

Other restaurants that retain their Michelin star from previous years are the two-star Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud in Dublin and the one-star Chapter One, l’Ecrivain and The Greenhouse in Dublin and Heron & Grey in Blackrock village. Other one-star restaurants are Aniar and Loam (Galway City), Campagne and Lady Helen at Mount Juliet Hotel (Kilkenny), Wild Honey Inn, Lisdoonvarna (Clare) and House Restaurant at Cliff House Hotel, Ardmore (Waterford).

There was also a big rise in the number of Michelin Bib Gourmand awards – awarded for restaurants offering a three-course meal for €40 or less. Four newcomers joined the list of 24 Bib Gourmand recipients in Ireland.

‘A lot of ability in Ireland right now’

MICHELIN seems to be waking up, very slowly, to food in Ireland. Yesterday, three further restaurants achieved a star, all of them in Cork city or county. The winners were the stunning Ichigo Ichie by Takashi Miyazaki; the tiny and brilliant Chestnut by Robbie Krawczyk in Ballydehob and The Mews, Baltimore, by Ahmet Dede. I am delighted for them all while harbouring serious reservations about the Michelin system.

So, what’s my beef with Michelin stars?

In a word, inconsistency, especially when you compare Ireland to other countries. In Ireland, Michelin stars decorate some excellent restaurants, while ignoring a whole lot of other equally good places.

There are no three-star restaurants in Ireland at present which is, frankly, a hoot. Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud is the only one with two, which is also risible. Anyone who has eaten in three-star establishments elsewhere in the world knows that Guilbaud’s is definitely in that league, and has been for years.

More to the point, anyone who has eaten in one-star restaurants in Britain will be aware that places such as Chapter One, to take just one example here, are streets ahead. As for one-star restaurants in France, I’ve experienced some very average meals, and an occasional stinker. One of the worst and most expensive meals of my life was in a one-star place in Italy.

And I’m not alone. UK critic Jay Rayner described his meal last year at the staggeringly expensive three-star Le Cinq in Paris, as ‘by far the worst restaurant experience I have endured in my 18 years in this job’.

SO, what do the stars mean, if anything at all? The one-star restaurants, according to Michelin, offer ‘very good cooking in its category’. What? Chapter One? L’Ecrivain? The Greenhouse? What category would that be? Excellent food, service and wine lists, for a start?

According to Michelin, the only restaurant in Ireland, north or south, that offers ‘excellent cooking, worth a detour’ is Patrick Guilbaud’s. That’s how a two-star establishment is defined. A detour from Stephen’s Green? From Athlone? Where?

Three stars, Michelin says, denotes ‘exceptional cuisine that is worth a special journey’. Well, I’ve enjoyed exceptional cuisine at Guilbaud’s even if my ‘special journey’ has been by way of the No.7 bus.

It seems that Ireland must try harder to get proper attention from the celebrated tyre company, and from the UK Michelin inspectorate that deals, in a rather postcolonial way, with this entire island.

Michelin took to Twitter last week to remind us that stars are awarded, as it claimed, solely for the food. Nothing else matters, it said, and I can’t remember a single chef ever buying that line. True, there’s a chicken stall in Singapore with a Michelin star and, I’m told, it’s good but not better than a lot of others. It seems to be Michelin pretending, cynically, to be ‘all about the food’.

Well, if it’s all about the food, why no star for Andy McFadden’s delightfully decadent Glovers Alley in Dublin’s Fitzwilliam Hotel? Was the quota for Ireland this year used up further south? And what about one for no-frills The Fish Shop on Queen Street? And why no recognition for Amuse on Dawson Street? And nothing for Dax? If it’s truly all about the food, what does Michelin not like about Michael’s in Mount Merrion? Is the food too robust, too simple, too generous? Oh, I could go on and on…

Chefs are put in a bit of a spot by the stars. On the one hand, they know that stellar recognition from Michelin puts bums on seats. But not necessarily the ones they want. Skye Gyngell, for example, kept mum when awarded a star when she was at Petersham Nurseries in greater London but said, when she moved on: ‘It’s been a curse… we’ve had a lot more complaints.’

Yes, there’s a certain kind of customer who follows the Michelin Guide as if it’s holy writ. And a lot of them are holy terrors!

So, chefs have to keep their true thoughts about stars to themselves. Privately, many of them have told me that they worry about getting a star only to find themselves then worrying about losing it. Many starholders have also said to me that the system is deeply flawed. But, naturally, there’s something of the cultural cringe in the rubbery pat on the head.

A few years ago, Michelin tweeted that the time was right to give a star to The Greenhouse in Dublin. I think what it really meant was that it could no longer deal with the utter bemusement of Irish chefs that Mickael Viljanen’s outstanding food was being ignored. But the implication was that his cooking had suddenly improved and hit the Michelin one-star standard. Everybody else knew that this was nonsense, and rather insulting nonsense at that.

Everybody in the restaurant business (or restaurant criticism, for that matter) also knows that the food at The Greenhouse is, at the very least, of two-star quality. Can it be that the dining room doesn’t quite measure up? It’s fine, as far as I’m concerned, but I wonder about Michelin’s deepest thoughts on the subject.

So, it’s all about the food? Yeah, right. Not even the service? Or the wine list? Pull the other one.

THE Michelin Guides – they sell over a million of these red books every year – are essential companions for overpaid, insecure, status-conscious whingers and complainers who eat out to be seen in the ‘right’ places and to exercise their perfectly honed sense of entitlement. And Michelin appears to know that market intimately, and what makes it tick.

But the truth is that food, broadly speaking, is moving away from the kind of paradigm that Michelin celebrates. Oliver Dunne of Bon Appetit in Malahide had a star for several years before deciding to change the style of his restaurant to something more casual and not in keeping with the Michelin style. Many chefs who have taken this route have seen business improve, thanks to giving people, essentially, what they want.

There is a distinct move away from what is perceived as Michelin-style ‘fine dining’ and a growing realisation that great food doesn’t come with formality or even in courses as we have known them. Michelin has been slow to take this on board and while this year’s stars in Britain have started to do so, this is not yet the case in Ireland.

Michelin is trying to catch up with the new reality but, overall, their stars seem old-fashioned, of little interest to younger people, and pretty well irrelevant to most normal human beings. Unless, of course, you’re a chef.

I’ll be raising a glass to the three new Michelin-star restaurants because they represent the hard work, brilliance and dedication of great chefs with great teams. But I still believe that Michelin are slow learners and that the reality of restaurants, and of food on plates, is way ahead of its Guides and its remarkably variable criteria for awards.