La Dolce Vita at Jack's Railway Bar & Restaurant

You know you have had a good meal out when you wake up thinking about it! Well that's what happened to me this morning after a fantastic meal out at the La Dolce Vita event at Jack's Railway Bar & Restaurant in Kells. Jack's is run by the lovely Martin and Victoria, a young dynamic couple from Lithuania who took over the restaurant in January. Martin looks after the bar while Victoria expertly manages the front of house. In the kitchen is Aurora, originally from Italy, and having run her own restaurant in Navan for years knows what the customers are looking for when it comes to food. 

Coppi, Belfast

One of the pluses of living in Meath is that we aren’t too far from Belfast. A quick hour and a half up the motorway gets us easily into Belfast City which we visit a few times a year. Our most recent trip up was to visit the Game of Thrones exhibition in the Titanic Quarter. I am a fan of the show but perhaps not to the same extent as the boyfriend but I happily went along with the promise of some shopping and a meal out! So after we had shopped ourselves out and seen enough costumes and prop swords for the day, we headed along to Coppi in St. Anne’s Square for an evening meal. 

Titanic Quarter

St. Anne’s Square is a newish development which includes the Ramada Encore Hotel and a number of other restaurants which look out on to the square. I stayed in the Ramada when the square was just being built so it was lovely to see the finished area. It is a pretty, bustling square and is only about 10 minutes walk from Victoria Square Shopping Centre and from the Odyssey Arena. Coppi is an Italian-inspired restaurant and is named after the Italian cyclist Angelo Fausto Coppi who was the dominant international cyclist in the years before and after the Second World War. His successes earned him the title Il Campionissimo, or champion of champions!  

The menu is a mix of cichetti, small plates, pizzette and pastas. We started off with cichetti which are small snacks typically served in traditional bars throughout Venice. This was a really nice way to get to try a few different dishes and sample a bit more of the menu. We got three cichetti - Feta fritters & truffled honey; Smoked chicken, endive, Gorgonzola & walnut and Spiced pork & fennel sausage.

 

All three were wonderful though the pork sausage was a little spicy for me. I adored the feta fritters which were light and melt in the mouth and I could have eaten many more of them. 

 

For the mains I choose the Portavogie Prawns which was made with squid ink linguini, sundried tomato, basil, shallot & lemon. Unfortunately they had no prawns left but they replaced them with crab meat which worked just as well. I always think black pasta never looks great as there is something about black pasta which isn’t aesthetically pleasing but this was one of the best pasta dishes I have had in a while. It was light and summery and I could taste the crab throughout the dish. All the pasta used in the dishes is made fresh inhouse too.

The boyfriend went for the daily special which was Tagliatelle with beef in a marsala and mushroom sauce. There wasn’t a drop left once he was done with it, though I found the sauce slightly heavy myself. We were both very happy with the dishes we had chosen and there wasn't a lot of sharing going on during the meal!

 

  

Then it was onto dessert. After the high standards of our mains dessert was a bit of a disappointment. The boyfriend went for Tiramisu which was perfectly adequate but didn’t quite live up to Italian standards. 

I went for the Passionfruit Crème Brulee which sounded fantastic but in reality was far too rich and the sugar on top was slightly over caramelised and verged on the side of burnt. 

 

Disappointing desserts aside next time I am up in Belfast I will definitely be visiting Coppi again. I could spend a happy hour or two there chatting with friends, drinking wine and nibbling on cichetti! The meal cost us £45.50 and that was for three cichetti, two mains, two desserts and a glass of wine. 



Web: www.coppi.co.uk
Find them on Facebook here and on Twitter here.

Dining in Kenmare: Prego, Wharton's, Cupán Tae and Kenmare Icecream

As a general rule myself and the boyfriend tend to holiday in Ireland and as much as I hate the word, we are ‘staycationers’. I crave peace, quiet, good food and lots of walking and holidays in Ireland tick all these boxes. For our summer holidays this year we got to spend a lovely week in Parknasilla Resort down in Sneem, Co. Kerry. This resort would generally be waaaaay out our budget but I recently had a lucky streak where I won a week’s holiday, a cookbook and cinema tickets. Well sure it never rains but pours as the saying goes!! 

Parknasilla is a beautiful resort based in the Ring of Kerry and overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. It is surrounded by acres of land and there are tons of activities to choose from. We stayed in the villas there and used them as our base to explore the surrounding areas of Kerry. Kenmare was half an hour away by car so it was one of the places that we ate out quite a bit in. 

Kenmare has some great restaurants and seems to be cheaper than the more touristy Killarney though maybe it is because Kenmare seems to be filled with families and it has taken that into account. First off the list was Wharton’s Fish & Chips, this is a takeaway/small sit down restaurant that we wandered past, turned around and came back in to read the menu. They had us at hake burger!! We ordered two at four euros each and got some chips as well. 

This has to be without doubt the best fish burger I have ever had. They batter and fry the fish right in front of you, place it in a fresh bap and add some tartar sauce. It is simple but damn it was good! The chips were also fried to perfection, crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside. They weren’t greasy at all and I could have almost kidded myself into believing it was half healthy. We went back a second time ordered the same thing and got onion rings as well. These were a little disappointing as they were a bit greasy but no worse than anywhere else I have ever eaten them. Be warned though the take away portions are huge, if sitting down they are less so but still substantial. You will not come away hungry!

Hake Burgers and Chips

For lunch we tried Cupán Tae, which after having recently tried out in Galway I was raving about to himself. I did warn him before that everything was fine china cups, very flowery and totally girly but he is well used to that by now! Cupán Tae in Kenmare didn’t disappoint on the crockery but it did disappoint on the food. The menu here is very limited and nothing at all like the Galway Cupán Tae. Himself had a good enough tuna melt while I had a chicken sandwich. I probably should have known better it was literally two pieces of bread with chicken and butter, no relish… nothing. It brought me right back to days spent on the beach as a kid in the 80s!! It was literally what it said on the menu but after being in Galway my expectations had been set very high. For five euros it felt a bit like a tourist rip off! Thankfully though the lime and courgette cake was exactly the same – delicious and moist and always a treat. So if I head there again it would be for just tea and cake. 

During the week we also headed to Prego, an Italian Restaurant, which had enticed us in with the promise of potato pizza. We traipsed up at about 9.30 on a Wednesday evening and were lucky to get a seat as the place was packed. It is a small restaurant and it was cosy but there was a great buzz in the place. We started off the evening with Salmon Crostini and Raviollo Al Gambaretti. The crostini was toasted bread topped with Kenmare Smoked Salmon with a lemon & red onion mayonnaise while the raviollo were small ravioli filled with spinach, cream & garlic.

Both were great starters though the raviollo almost made me wish I had ordered pasta for my main it was that good. Then it was onto the pizza where I ordered the sausage and potato one and he got the Noble Pig. The Noble Pig was topped with slow roasted shredded pork, rocket and apple slices while the sausage and potato pizza came fully loaded with local sausage and baby potatoes. The pizzas were thin, crispy and had great flavor combinations. Having lived in Italy the concept of potato pizza wasn’t new to me but I haven’t seen it outside Italy before and I actually think it was better than what I have had there before.  Having eaten every last scrap it was a struggle whether or not to end with dessert but as the food was so good we got a tiramisu and a tarte au citron. The tiramisu was lovely if a bit heavy for me at that time of night though my lemon tart went down a treat. The whole bill came to just under €50 and that was including a good espresso. 

One other thing to note about Prego is that they do not offer a children’s menu they instead offer smaller portions of all the grown up food so that kids are eating exactly the same food as Mum and Dad. They also offer gluten free pasta and will try to cater to other dietary needs especially if given a bit of notice. We went back the following Friday night starving after a walk up and around Torc Waterfall (it’s a lovely walk try it if you get a chance) but alas they were fully booked. That’s what we get for being too relaxed on holidays!!

One final must try is Kenmare Icecream and with 21 flavours to choose from I used that as justification for the four times we went there during the one week!! It is the good sort of creamy icecream that tastes like the flavour it is meant to be and on the plus side it isn’t that expensive. For two waffle cones with one scoop each cost us €3.85 which is quite a difference to Murphys in Killarney which cost us €7. This place would also be perfect for children that have an intolerance to dairy as they did have sorbets on offer. 

 

   
Kenmare is a beautiful part of Kerry and if you are deciding on somewhere to stay for future holidays I would highly recommend it. It would be a great base to explore the Ring of Kerry from and has great food and pubs to come back to after a long day out exploring the countryside, swimming in the sea or just enjoying everything Ireland has to offer. 

 

Lunching Around Ireland

Last week saw me trapse through the bottom half of Ireland for a mixture of business and pleasure. This whistlestop tour brought me to Wexford, Limerick and Galway and it was the perfect opportunity to try out some new places I wouldn't normally get too. Now as we all know the locals always know the best places to go so I got a few to divulge their secrets on where to go to for a lunchtime feed and I think I have found some gems!!!

La Dolce Vita - Wexford

This Italian cafe might be one of the best kept secrets EVER. Having lived in Italy I am notoriously hard to please when it comes to Italian restaurants. A lot of restaurants entice me in with promises of perfect pastas, pizzas and tiramisu but few deliver. La Dolce Vita is perhaps the BEST Italian food I have had outside Italy in a long time!! Forgive all the capitals but I really can't emphaize how special this little place is!!

The menu in La Dolce Vita offers paninis and other lunchtime fare but we were here for pasta. Or so I thought until I saw the specials menu - swordfish, venison, ossobuco - Oh where to start!! So after having a few quick steathly peeks at what other diners were eating we settled on two specials - Spagetti with Taleggio and Tomato and Ossobuco with Germolata.

The spagetti was delicious perfectly cooked and really flavoursome with the taleggio melted through it.

The Ossobuco was divine, the meat was falling off the bone and the sauce was light but tasty and it was covered with wondefully fresh gremolata. The portions size are huge and perfect for sharing. Great if you are looking for a Valentines lunch this week!! Of course then we decided it would be rude to leave without trying the tiramisu and an espresso, both of which rounded off the meal.

One other lovely thing about this restaurant is that the owner was really involved in the running of the place and would come out to check on us and make sure we were enjoying ourselves. It was a lovely touch and the fact that he gave me one of my favourite italian chocolates on the way out has endeared him to me forever!! The only thing wrong with this place is that it isnt closer to Dublin!!

La Dolce Vita don't have a website but you can find them on Menupages here

 

The Sage Cafe - Limerick

Our Limerick local told us to get down to The Sage Cafe early as the place is jammers at lunch and as soon as we arrived we could see why. This cafe is easy to spot with its inviting green exterior and funky decor. All the food looked very inviting from their daily specials right down to their desserts which are homemade along with all their breads, jams and chutney. After crawling intently through the menu we both finally settled on the fish pie. The pie was gorgeous not too dense and topped with fluffy mashed potato. This is a great lunchspot and so if you are in Limerick why not give this little spot a go and team it with a visit to the Milk Market for a perfect food filled morning out. Apparently Mike Hogan from the Cranberries owns the restaurant too. Now there is a prime bit of local gossip for you!!

For more info on the Cafe click here

Cava Spanish Restaurant and Tapas Bar - Galway 

This is a tapas restaurant but lunch is served here daily. The menu includes loads of gorgeous Bocadillos (Spanish Sandwiches), lovely soups and salads, stew and some specials which are changed to relect what's in season. I was very tempted by the sounds of the chickpea stew with chorizo and meatballs but instead I went for their great offer of a soup, sandwich and coffee for only ten euros. So for ten euros this is what you get:

 And look at that for a sandwich, full of serrano ham and manchego:

 And a delicious bowl of broccoli soup:

The lunch food here is tasty, filling and great value. I will definately be back for a return visit and hopefully I can fit in a dinner visit next time.

For more info on Cava Spanish Restaurant click here