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Restaurant review: ‘The cooking in Saint Francis Provisions is on a par with the best to be found anywhere in Ireland’

Creative, confident and respectful of the West Cork larder, our restaurant critic has a perfect meal in Kinsale

Smoked potatoes with creme fraiche and cod's roe

Lamb with labneh and broad beans

Smoked potatoes with creme fraiche and cod's roe

Mackerel with chermoula

Lamb with labneh and broad beans

Katy McGuinness

August 14 2021 02:30 AM

I saw some snippiness on Twitter a while back in an exchange about the town of Kinsale and its supposed status as ‘the gourmet capital of Ireland’. The detail of the scrap eludes me now but the gist was that ‘gourmet’ is a word that should long since have been retired and that an abundance of restaurants doesn’t necessarily mean any of them are any good.

I have to agree about ‘gourmet’ — and its successor ‘foodie’ for that matter, why can’t we come up with something better? — and I know well that mediocrity can prevail in restaurant hotspots, even when you’d think competition would keep standards high. Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.

But a pre-dinner walk around busy Kinsale has me making notes of at least half a dozen places of which I like the look — a return visit is on the cards.

Tonight, though, I am on a mission to visit a restaurant which caught my eye on Instagram a couple of years back and has been tantalising me ever since.

Barbara Nealon is originally from Kilkee in Co Clare and, after art college, spent a decade in San Francisco where she had a sausage-making business, before returning to live in Ireland three years ago with her husband and young family.

She opened Saint Francis Provisions in the centre of Kinsale in June 2019, and over the past two years I’ve watched it morph from cafe to shop to takeaway, serving up everything from breakfasts and sandwiches to coffees, meal kits and picnics to go. I can only imagine how exhausting this must have been.

Smoked potatoes with creme fraiche and cod's roe

Right now, though, with chef Darren Kennedy, who returned from London to take up the position, in the kitchen, SFP is a restaurant serving dinner outside four nights a week from Wednesday to Saturday. I have the sense that there is joy in the rhythm of this maturing — if only the weather could be relied upon to play ball — although who knows what pivots may be required in the future?

We start with pillowy focaccia and a beautifully balanced romesco, before a whirlwind jaunt through some brilliant small plates. There are langoustines in their shells with buttermilk and seaweed butter, and the most gorgeous broccoli with salsa macha and ajo blanco which Barbara tells me is one of SFP’s signature dishes and — knock me down with a feather — vegan to boot.

We love both the single raviolo filled with greens and local ricotta and oozing yellow egg yolk, surrounded by a puddle of Caherbeg chorizo sauce, and a dish of charred leeks and chicken thighs topped with pangrattato and a sauce gribiche that puts us in mind of the salad cream of childhood summers (in a good way).

There are smoked pink fir apple potatoes with creme fraiche and Goatsbridge trout roe (the woman at the next table somewhat shamefacedly orders these as her main course, but Barbara tells her she’s by no means the first); beets with St Tola goats’ curd, cherries and hazelnuts, and molten burrata with courgettes and Aleppo pepper.

By way of main courses we eat spanking fresh mackerel with chermoula and perfect tomatoes that taste of summer, and charred Nihari lamb chops with peas, broad beans and labneh, a dish that’s as big-flavoured and big-hearted as everything else on this wonderful menu. (We’re hoping that the cavatelli en brodo with charred corn, chunks of Caherbeg hock and Shepherd’s Store that we spot at another table will be on the menu when we return in a few days’ time.)

Mackerel with chermoula

We finish with a shared boozy baba soaked in local Black’s rum, accompanied by macerated cherries, a simple pudding that’s much more than a sum of its parts.

There’s always a worry when you have been anticipating a restaurant and looking forward to eating in it for so long that the reality will be a let-down. In the case of Saint Francis Provisions nothing could be further from the truth, and no sooner had we left than we were planning to return. The cooking here is on a par with the best to be found anywhere in Ireland, simultaneously creative, confident and respectful of the West Cork larder on which it is based.

Dinner for three, including a Cockagee Cider (€8) and a bottle of the Judith Beck Hunny Bunny (€55) (if you’re a fan of her Ink you will love this even more, although the No Sexual Services on the label is puzzling), a deliciously light and energetic Blaufränkisch bursting with bright red fruit from a wine list that’s as interesting as the food menu, comes to €194.

Budget
€25pp if you share a few small plates.

Blowout
€50 each for snacks, starter, main course and pudding.

The rating
10/10 food
10/10 ambience
10/10 value
30/30

Saint Francis Provisions, Short Quay, Kinsale, Co Cork; Instagram @stfranciskinsale

Restaurant review: ‘The cooking in Saint Francis Provisions is on a par with the best to be found anywhere in Ireland’

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