Tag Archive for: Cork

It’s commonplace these days to chart provenance on a menu. At Goldie one supplier name hopped off the list in front of me – Singing Frog Gardens. Alas, no sweetly croaking amphibians feature at Aishling Moore’s Cork restaurant famed for its ‘gill to fin’ sustainable fish cookery. But wasabi root grown in the West Cork backwoods does. It’s a speciality of the Gardens’ Alex Gazzaniga, a cultivator of rare and pungent salads and vegetables not traditionally native to Ireland (or many habitats in Europe, come to that). The name comes from the raucous frogs attracted to the damp forest setting suited to growing wasabi, brassica cousin to horseradish and mustard. Ironically the root thrives in a moist microclimate that can also encourage potato blight.

My Dublin-based colleague, the talented Caitríona Devery, has written two articles for Ireland Eats (wasabi and gardens) on this reclusive market gardener, who moved to Ireland from England 15 years ago and now supplies innovative indie restaurants with what greengrocers used to call ‘queer gear’. Wasabi seems a given for Takashi Miyazaki, guru behind Cork city’s Ichigo Ichie and Miyazaki. He was among Alex’s first customers; Aishling with her almost Japanese attention to fish is another perfect fit.

No question the meal of our recent Irish road trip was at Goldie on Oliver Plunkett Street across the road from equally casual stablemate Elbow Lane. Before seafood called Aishling honed her cooking skills at this fire-led, meat-centric micro-brewhouse (which also name-checks Singing Frog among the butchers and maltsters).

Cork-born Aishling opened Goldie when she was 24, just six months before the pandemic. From the start she was determined to create a sustainable, changing menu from what was landed daily on Ballycotton quayside. Nothing of the available catch was to be wasted, in particular those fish previously thrown back into the sea. The approach is called Whole Catch, the name of the slim volume she published in 2024, the year after she was named Ireland’s Young Chef of the Year. No glossy images, just Nicky Hooper’s characterful illustrations. These include, inside front and back, the golden salmon-shaped weathervane that has crowned the hilltop St Anne’s Church, Shandon since the 1750s and gives its name to the restaurant.

Whole Catch is in essence a pared back primer, charting how to handle fish from the whole raw state to the plate. The recipes are not afraid of powerful global flavours, but the freshest Irish raw materials never seem smothered. Surprises include her favouring the butterflied tails of round fish. From the small plates section we tried the hake tail schnitzel with gherkin and celeriac remoulade and soy cured egg yolk. Utter delight until it was surpassed by the chicken and butter miso sauce that perfectly partnered the firm, sweet flesh of pan-fried John Dory, an unexpected ‘luxury’ fish.


A pudding that is approaching a similar signature dish status is the caramelised white chocolate, Achill Island sea salt, milk sorbet, with a buckwheat tuile. Proof of the sophisticated culinary intelligence at work. Pleasure principle counterpointing the sustainability crusade. Goldie’s Michelin Bib Gourmand is throughly deserved. Surely a star must be close.

Chatting afterwards, Aishling distanced herself from the application of meat butchery/charcuterie techniques as espoused by Australian chef Josh Nyland, whose own manifesto, The Whole Fish Cookbook, echoes hers. “Lots of folk make the connection, but I’d never even heard of him when we opened Goldie. Others compare us with Lir up on the north coast of Ireland, but they follow the Nyland route, making their own fish-based charcuterie. The nearest I’ve got to that is some fish jerky!”

Lir chef patron Stevie McCarry made it to the final of the Great British Menu 2025. The closest Aishling has got to celebrity across the Irish Sea was a couple of  appearances on Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch, the last in November, to celebrate World Fish Day. On her July debut she cooked the Shime Mackerel recipe you’ll find in Whole Catch – which I intended to replicate (the main image is Channel 4’s). It involves a 10 hour sashimi-style marinade of salt, mirin, brown rice vinegar and, crucially, dried kombu kelp (Irish and Japanese in one seasoning). Soy and wasabi to accompany. West Cork wasabi had kindly been posted to me and had to be grated quickly to guarantee its kick. Alas, I was called to a France for a week before I could source the freshest of mackerel, which this dish required. So, to avoid drying out, the surprisingly delicate wasabi was summoned to perk up some hot smoked salmon before my departure.

On my return I bought a couple of Cornish mackerel; from Out of The Blue in Chorlton, Manchester, substituting horseradish from our garden for the wasabi. On Sunday Brunch beetroot ponzu and pickled ginger were the mackerel’s sidekicks. Just some plain roasted beetroot for me, but the dish was drop dead gorgeous.

  • A major Aishling inspiration is another Brit expat, master fish smoker and ocean activist Sally Barnes, who has been curing wild salmon and other fish at her Woodcock Smokery near Skibbereen since 1979. Aisling confirms: “Conversations with her have massively influenced the way I think and how I perceive things.” At her venue, The Keep, Sally runs artisan masterclasses and occasional dinners. As I write this the guest chef at the latest event is Nina Matsunaga of the Black Bull, Sedbergh, Cumbria, a huge favourite of mine (read my review).

Fact file

In Cork city we stayed in two hotels – The Montenotte Hotel, Middle Glanmire Road, Montenotte, Cork, T23 E9DX, Ireland. +353 21 453 0050.and The River Lee Hotel, Western Road, The Lough, Cork, T12 X2AH, Ireland. +353 21 425 2700.

Whole Catch (Blasta Books, 17 euros plus postage) is available from the Goldie website.

The great short story writer William Trevor knew all about exile. His was self-imposed. For the last half century of his life (he died in 2016) he lived in Devon, but his fictional focus stayed firmly on his native Ireland.

In 1969 he published a story called Memories of Youghal. It is set in the South of France resort of Bandol, but harks back to a very different southern port, in County Cork, when a drunken, disheveled stranger intrudes on the annual holiday of two loveless old maids – typical Trevor protagonists.

Miss Grimshaw returns to their hotel from a walk on the beach to find her deckchair usurped by one Quillan, a detective apparently, who has upset her companion Miss Ticher  by detailing his tragic childhood in Youghal where he was orphaned by the sea at five months old and sorely neglected thereafter. Whiskey-fuelled, the encounter brings to the surface long-suppressed frustrations.

In contrast, the author had spent the happiest years of his childhood in Youghal (pronounced yawl), where his father was a bank manager. We spent the happiest days of our off-season County Cork sojourn in the town, pre-pandemic. Cork city, which we flew into with Aer Lingus, had proved rather dispiriting, while Youghal was an unexpected revelation. Ireland’s Blue Book had arranged for us to stay at sophisticated Hayfield Manor in Cork and laid-back Longueville House to the North. An interlude in Youghal had seemed like a makeweight despite the seafood reputation of our base there, Aherne’s Townhouse. How mistaken we were. Its true Irishness is preferable to gussied up gastro hub Kinsale the other side of Cork city.

From Walter Raleigh to Oliver Cromwell, from Moby Dick to the legendary lady who danced with Richard III before Bosworth Field the town was full of surprises.

With a melancholy undertow, though. Youghal had clearly seen more prosperous times. Yet we revelled in feeling we were characters in some William Trevor work. Take Treacy’s Bar. A sly afternoon Guinness felt in order after a busy morning exploring the town’s rich heritage. So we ensconced ourselves in in the snug off Main Street. The pub’s live music space has been dubbed the ‘Ballroom of the Romance’. An inadvertent echo of Trevor’s story of that name, turned into a TV film 40 years ago? Another dissection of blighted hopes, it was based on an actual ballroom he stumbled on in Leitrim.

At lunchtime Treacy’s was beyond cosy, but surely they could open the curtains to let the soft coastal light in? “Oh, it’s out of respect for a funeral cortege from St Mary’s that’ll be passing by shortly. One of our regulars, a lovely fellow, taken from us too soon.”

We toasted your man with the dark stuff and pondered the oddness of this town being home to two churches, both St Mary’s, less than 400 yards apart. One is the Catholic Parish Church hosting the day’s funeral, the other the 13th century St Mary’s Collegiate Church, claimed to be the oldest place of continuous worship in Ireland. Church of Ireland, bastion of English Protestant rule, it sits cheek by jowl with the Warden’s House (privately owned and known as Myrtle Grove), once home to Sir Walter Raleigh when he was Town Mayor. 

In truth he only lived here intermittently during his 17 years in Ireland as a landlord benefiting immensely from the seizure or rebel lands. But Myrtle Grove (above) has strong claims to be the setting for the story that his servant doused Raleigh with a bucket of water after seeing clouds of smoke coming from his tobacco pipe, believing he had been set alight.

The prosperous English settlers built their grand houses inside Youghal’s medieval walls. Today, well preserved, they still afford magnificent views across the wide Blackwater Estuary.

 And to think we’d only come to Youghal on a late detour, for the fish. Specifically to Ahernes Townhouse, which celebrates its 100th anniversary next year. It styles itself as ‘Seafood Restaurant and Accommodation’, which is probably the correct emphasis. The rooms tucked away in a courtyard off Main Street are boutique homely, but it is the locally landed seafood that really sings, treated unfussily and served with a rare warmth by the Fitzgibbon family in both the dining room and the bar. 

I’d suggest you share the Hot Seafood Selection, featuring salmon, cod, monkfish, hake and brill in a chive sauce alongside prawns, oysters and mussels cooked with wine, garlic and olive oil. To partner this feast order a Hugel Riesling from Alsace from a wine list full of bargains. Of course, a Guinness and a dozen native oysters might suffice.

David Fitzgibbon kindly arranged tours of both the Clock Tower and the Collegiate Church for the next morning. The first transported us vividly from the site’s 14th century origins as a Walled Town fort, later separating the English incomers from the poorer native ‘Irishtown’, through its rebuilding as a grim gaol in 1777 on to the 20th century occupants of its draughty storeys. Beautifully recounted social history from a volunteer storyteller. Many thanks to Aisling O’Leary for my main townscape image, centred on the Clock Tower.

We made two private trips around the Collegiate Church, there was so much to explore. We loved the monument to Richard Boyle, the first Earl of Cork, who died in Youghal in 1643. Two wives, his mother and nine of his 15 children join him in an astonishing  ensemble, which cost over £500, a fortune in those days.

Without the fame of Raleigh whose estate he bought for a comparative song, the eventual Earl of Cork and Lord Treasurer of Ireland certainly cut the mustard as a self-made Jacobean adventurer/entrepreneur. 

The only property Raleigh retained in Ireland was nearby Inchiquin Castle (today a ruin), let for life from the Dowager Countess of Desmond. Legend has it she died in 1604, aged 140 (having regrown a full set of teeth), after a fall from a cherry tree. Ireland’s full of tall tales. As a girl she was supposed to have danced with Richard III before his death at the battle of Bosworth. You do the sums. 

Turbulent history continued to dog Youghal and its church. A few years later Oliver Cromwell wintered his troops in this strategic port, more important than Cork’s, en route to quell a rebellion. He is said to have preached a funeral oration to one of his officers standing on a trunk, still there in the Collegiate sanctuary. 

This is only scratching the surface of the church’s riches and the rest of the walled town offers almshouses, merchant’s mansions and plenty more. Even the many empty shops are housed in rather grand buildings, proof of Youghal’s commercial heyday, now long past.

Surprises abound. Stray the other side of the Clock Tower Gate – Main Street passes through it – and you’ll eventually come to the vast sandy beach that made Youghal a popular seaside resort, reached from Cork City by train. Until the trains stopped in 1982.

My wife’s mother, whose father worked for the railways and so got free travel, often came here as a girl on a Sunday jaunt and never once stepped into the Walled Town. 

For sentimental reasons we strolled hand-in-hand across the bracing strand, lamenting that we couldn’t be there for the annual ‘Queen Of The Sea’, a beauty pageant that also features a crab catching competition.

That now seems to have been a casualty of the pandemic, while the Youghal Potato Festival – a homage to the myth of Raleigh planting Ireland’s first spud crop here – bit the dust years ago. Still the The Moby Dick Festival is planning to go ahead this summer, covid protocols permitting. Expect a parade, a bonny baby competition and other blubberly treats.

Youghal famously stood in for New Bedford, Massachusetts when John Huston filmed his 1954 version of Herman Melville’s novel, starring Gregory Peck as Cap’n Ahab out for revenge on the whale that took his leg off. Huston got legless on occasion in Paddy Linehan’s pub, his quayside HQ. In his honour, Paddy later renamed it Moby Dicks and added a gallery of movie stills. Outside there’s a statue of Ahab and his harpoon that the Blackwater gulls show scant respect for.